Well, now I've seen everything. We caught the ASO performance of the Lord of the Rings this past weekend. Howard Shore, the composer of the music for the movies, conducted the piece. And it was quite good, if a bit choppy in parts (differing from the more movement-oriented Johan de Meij symphony by the same name). I supposed that's the price of compressing twelve hours of music down to two.
I think it was the crowd that really stole the show, though. Bikers, hippies, college kids, yuppies urban and sub-, they ran the gamut. There was a guy a few rows up wearing a concert muscle shirt for The Reverend Horton Heat ... but with the distance I couldn't tell whether his tattoos were Tolkien-inspired. And beverages were allowed in symphony hall, so there were many with plastic glasses of beer, wine, and sterner stuff.
I lost count of the number of standing ovations (complete with wolf whistles and whoops and catcalls). The strangest was when Howard Shore first stepped out onto the stage. I think there was one at the intermission, and then another two or three after the concert (I was glad for the opportunity to stretch my legs, to be sure). As the flashbulbs popped I looked for the soft flickering of cigarette lighters, and I waited expectantly for cries of "Free Bird!" Thankfully, I was disappointed on those last two counts.
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