It really has been 25 years since the release of the first movie in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. And now that you feel older than Gandalf, you need a rejuvenating jolt of musical magic to convince you that you’re actually as spry as Pippin, the youngest of the Hobbits who undertake the journey to Mordor.
Enter the Central Florida Community Arts Symphony Orchestra and Big Band, whose Music from Middle-Earth concert will provide an infusion of the eternally invigorating scores that composer Howard Shore supplied for all three movies.
An ensemble of 350 players will re-create the classic themes used by Shore—who netted three Oscars, two for Best Original Score and one for Best Original Song—to complement Jackson’s sweeping vistas and epic battles. Performances will be Thursday and Friday, November 12 and 13, at 7:30 p.m. at Northland Church in Longwood.
The program will be presented in three movements, with selections from every film in the trilogy. In addition, you’ll hear music by classical composers—including Wagner, Sibelius, Bruckner, Shostakovich and Mahler—who influenced Shore or simply worked in a similarly grand idiom.
Justin Muchoney, who’ll be conductor for the evening, is CFCArts’ artistic director. He has led the orchestra since 2010 and the Big Band since 2016 and, until he stepped down this August, had served for a year as executive director of CFCArts.
In keeping with the cinematic foundation of the program, the concert will feature elaborate theatrical lighting as well as short clips from the films and still projections of archival photos and artists’ renderings. There’ll also be effects like fog and haze—which is why the event carries an advisory for those with sensitivity to light.
Unlike some other CFCArts concerts, which have been known to run more than two hours, this one will come in closer to 100 minutes. The organization believes that a more compact presentation will appeal to younger viewers and other newcomers to the lore. Because even the tallest and sturdiest Ent had to grow from a tiny seedling.
Northland Church is located at 522 Dog Track Road, Longwood. For more information, call or visit the website.
