Photo by Stefan Servos
Today is Howard Shore’s 66th birthday! Shore is a three-time Academy Award winner, receiving two for Best Original Score for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. He also won Best Original Song for “Into the West” performed by Annie Lennox in Return of the King.
Shore is also scoring The Hobbit films, the first of which, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, hits cinemas on December 14, 2012. This marks another partnership with director Peter Jackson.
In 2010, he said about The Hobbit, “We’ve [Shore and Jackson] talked about making these movies for many years, at least since 2002. It looks like finally it’s going to be happening. I’ll be working on it for the next three years — it’s going to consume a lot of my time and work now.” With the addition of a third film in the Hobbit franchise, there’s no doubt that he will be spending much of his time in Middle-earth once more.
Shore said that he believes that The Lord of the Rings trilogy contains some of his best work, adding “everything I knew about composing, orchestrating, conducting — everything I had learned about music was in it.”
In honor of Howard Shore’s birthday, the UK online radio station Classic FM will be playing the complete Lord of the Rings Symphony tonight, starting at 8:00pm (GMT). Tune in at ClassicFM.com.
All of us here at Middle-earth News would like to wish Howard Shore a very happy birthday!
