The Symphony

Greetings friends, and fellow Tolkien admirers.

As this year has gone by, I have been neck deep in orchestral scores and finally it is time to announce that I will be compiling the material I've composed into an album which will be released in Autumn 2014. I am incredibly excited for this project, as it pulls together a dream I've had for years to compose and arrange symphonic pieces of music that are inspired by Professor Tolkien's great work "The Silmarillion."

So this blog will be here for you to stay connected with my work until the release date. I will endeavour to post once or twice a week, and hopefully with some audio clips of what I'm working on at the time. There will most definitely be a Kickstarter campaign in the very near future where you will be able to support this project.

Now for a little information on the project itself. First of all, the word "symphony" generally refers to a live orchestra with strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. While this project certainly has a live performance goal, it is simply cost prohibitive at this point. With that in mind, I have arranged for some live, in studio musicians to play some of the key parts of the symphony. (I am also a bassist so I could not deal with a synthetic sounding low end.) For the rest of the instruments, I will be using top of the line plugins. Thankfully, synthesizers have come a long way the last few years and they wield very realistic results.

Secondly, the first symphonic album with be the first of at least two. Drawing from the book, the compositions will start with "The Music of the Ainur" and end with "The Return of the Noldor." For those of you who are like me and have read the book many times, you know this means that there's at least another album to be written and possibly a third. After all, who wouldn't want to hear a massive piece like the Fall of Gondolin, or the War of Wrath?

Anyhow, I'll be posting more in the coming days and weeks as things continue to come together. I welcome your questions and thoughts on this project and will do my best to answer everything in good time.

Warmest regards,

Aaron