Doug Adams

Sorry, I meant '15.

Yeah, that was my thought too. I worked like a madman to write my first draft of Hobbit between January and early May 2015. But alas, it was not to be.

This is the double-edged sword of contracts: 1) hooray you have a contract!, but 2) you're completely at their mercy. I'm not making any noise on social media (does this count?), but I have an Impossible Silence meeting coming up later this week. Hobbit, I'll be honest, haven't heard anything for a while. I get the feeling that everyone is eyeing Amazon and waiting to see where the IP goes and what energy it produces. I'm trying to set up a couple of lectures -- one in the States and one in the UK -- in 2020, so at the very least I could present some of the Hobbit material there. Both would be in the second half of the year ... if they happen. EDIT: I should also point out that my professional life took a sort of drastic left turn four or five years ago, which left me with a little less time to nudge these projects along. So I can't place all the blame on publishers, etc. However, I had some medical stuff going on over the holidays, which allowed me a little more time with the computer. I guess I should be careful what I ask for!

Ironically, 2 is the only one that's already finished! *Sigh*

https://www.slsostories.org/post/john-williams-conducting-the-slso-november-1

The Music of the Hobbit Films was finished over four years ago. I have publisher's block.

The potential concerto was first (I think!) mentioned in a book that came out in June of 2017: Be Your Own Manager: A Career Handbook for Classical Musicians. "Today, Martin Grubinger is probably considered one of the biggest stars in classical music, and not just in percussion. Many great composers have written concertos for him, including Friedrich Cerha, Peter Eötvös, and Tan Dan. Rumors have it that John Williams wants to write a concerto for him."

Jim’s a dear friend and trusted collaborator. I tell him .... things.

Apologies, I misunderstood. No inserts were recorded in London for Moria.

The LPO recorded inserts.

They’re not errors. The orchestra membership changed when required. (LPO and NZSO alike.) The conductor’s scores from the sessions reflected this, but the instrumentation was standardized for live presentations. (This is the case with pretty much all live-to-projection performances.)

Years ago.

Re: Goldenthal ... Williams did attend a performance of Grendel in Los Angeles. Not film music, I know, but we can at least confirm he’s heard “The Beast Within.”

A wonderfully cogent point (no surprise) by Frank here … context is everything when defining what, precisely, constitutes a theme. Even extra-musical context can play a role. Incidentally, the word “theme” is thrown around a lot in The Music of the Lord of the Rings because, honestly, it’s the most efficient way of relating to readers. Constantly juggling “theme,” “motif,” “motive,” etc. was exhausting in early drafts … especially as each instance then required some sort of disclaimer relating to the innate subjectivity of it all. And that was before getting into musical context, composer intent, and so on. It was word soup! At some point, it’s cleaner to think of it all as “the material.” It reads horribly, but it’s much truer to most composers’ mindsets.

They’ve been dragging on almost exactly the same: they were finished within a few weeks of one another in the spring of 2015.