Thursday and Friday, August 18-19, Chicago Chorale will join forces with the Lakeside Singers, the Chicago Children’s Choir, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Ludwig Wicki, to perform the soundtrack in a showing of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings at Ravinia Park. I fully expect that the park, and the pavilion, will fill to capacity both nights. 

Electronics being what they are, these days, it appears to be a matter of pressing a few keys, to eliminate the musical soundtrack, while leaving dialogue and all other elements of the soundscape intact, and replace it with live performance. Coordinating the live performance with the film, however, matching everything up frame by frame, is a daunting challenge. The conductor has presented this very program several times, with numerous orchestras and choruses; none of the rest of us have ever done it, however, and we will need to be on our toes at all times. The entire movie has only forty minutes of vocal music, but that vocal music occurs, here and there, in major scenes as well as in limited, eight-bar phrases, throughout the performance. The full score, which I am studying and which I will use in leading rehearsals, has all of the music for the entire film, and weighs about five pounds; the choral scores have only the voice parts, with no accompaniment and only minimal orchestral cueing. The singers must count bars for pages at a time, before suddenly entering , often at a forte, at the extremes of their vocal ranges, frequently at breakneck tempos. Meters constantly change, as do tempo markings; and the singers must perform in such languages as Orc and Elvish, which are written in the score in something similar to what a middle school student might use if he were asked to spell out street slang, rather than in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), which singers are trained to read. Adding insult to injury—the font seems intended to look like Elvish runes—very decorative, but not much good for speed reading! 

Vocal demands are tremendous. In such scenes as the Mines of Moria, the choir is divided into as many as twelve parts, with basses singing page after page of low D’s while the first sopranos hang out on high A’s and B’s, all at fortissimo levels. 

I have been watching the film, and listening to a recording of the sound track, in preparation for our first rehearsal (we begin Monday evening, August 1, and meet nearly every day up to the performances). In the past, when I have watched the film, I have not paid much attention to the music; I have known it is there, and have appreciated the skill with which it augments the viewing experience, but I have left it in the background—which after all is where it belongs. Now that I am studying it, I realize, more with each exposure, how brilliantly it has been composed, and how masterfully it has been woven into the total fabric of the experience. I have heard that the composer, Howard Shore, spent three full years composing and preparing the music for the three films in the trilogy, and I am not in the least surprised– in its way, his task has been fully as complicated and all-encompassing as Bach’s task in composing the St. Matthew Passion. This is magnificent stuff. 

I don’t think I need to promote the performance– people are very excited about it, and I just hope they are not turned away at the gates, after driving from all points in the Chicagoland area to attend the performances. Nonetheless, I urge you to look at your calendars for August 18-19; if you can come and hear it, I’m sure you will agree with me that this is a stunning accomplishment, for the orchestra, the choruses, and the conductor. And the movie isn’t bad, either.

Lord of the Rings Fans Will Want to Make the Quest to Chicago's Ravinia Festival for an Epic Event 

By Carole Kuhrt Brewer

Chicago, Tuesday, August 9, 2011. Fans of The Lord of the Rings series should start making plans for an epic quest through the forests and over the ravines of Chicago's North Shore to Highland Park for a special event featuring the film, The Lord of the Rings-The Fellowship of the Ring, accompanied by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

The CSO, as part of their summer residency at Ravinia Festival, will conclude their summer season with two movie nights featuring the film and live music on Thursday, August 18 and Friday, August 19. 

For this momentous occasion, the Orchestra has moved their popular Friday Night at the Movies Series north to Highland Park. The beloved CSO movie series taps into the long history of symphonic music in the movies by using their full orchestra to play the score from selected movies while the movie is projected on a screen. 

Conductor Ludwig Wicki will be making his Ravinia debut performing the Oscar-winning score from The Lord of the Rings-The Fellowship of the Ring by Howard Shore accompanying the complete film. The movie will be projected on a giant video screen on the lawn and in the pavilion. The performances will also feature soprano Kaitly Lusk, alto Henry Griffin, The Lakeside Singers, Chicago Chorale and the Chicago Children's Choir. 

Tickets. Tickets are $50 for the pavilion; $25 lawn or $65 for a ticket and dining package. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit Ravinia.org or call the Ravinia Box Office at 847-266-5100. Kids under 15 as well as high school and college students with valid student I.D.s are free on the lawn at all classical concerts. 

Special Guest Chef. Ravinia’s guest chef series continues on the evenings of August 18 and 19 with Thomas Bowman, executive chef from iNG visiting the festival’s Park View restaurant. Reservations can be made, in advance, by calling 847-432-7550 or reserving a table online at Ravinia.org. 

Book signing. Prior to both performances author Doug Adams, who penned the book The Music of the Lord of the Rings, will participate in book-signings starting at 6:45P.m. in front of Ravinia Gifts. 

Time. The park opens at 5p.m. The performance begins at 7:30p.m. both evenings. Thursday, August 18 and Friday, August 19, 2011.

Location. Ravinia Festival is located at Lake Cook and Green Bay roads in Highland Park, IL. Parking is available in the Ravinia parking lot adjacent to the park on Green Bay Rd. until full. Shuttles are provided from Metra parking lots at Ravinia and Highland Park.

Public Transportation. Check the Metra north lines for trains stopping at Ravinia Park. Otherwise patrons can exit the train at the Braeside stop and walk north about 1/3 of a mile to the park.

CSO works its musical magic on ‘Rings’ 

By DOROTHY ANDRIES 

Conductor Ludwig Wicki fell in love with movie music when he heard the film scores of famed Italian composer Ennio Morricone. 

“I was 16 and after hearing his music, I became interested in film soundtracks,” said the Swiss conductor, when reached by telephone in his home town of Lucerne. After that he discovered another significant Italian Nino Rota, who composed for the movies of Federico Fellini and scored all Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” films. 

Wicki will be on the podium at the Ravinia Festival pavilion for two nights Aug. 18 and 19, conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Howard Shore’s complete Academy Award winning score for “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” while the three-hour film is being shown. Choral parts will be performed by the Lakeside Singers, the Chicago Chorale and the Chicago Children’s Choir. 

Playing to the film 

Wicki first conducted that score in what is called live-to-projection in 2008 in Lucerne and since then has performed it 30 times. “I did it with my orchestra,” he said “the 21st Century Orchestra. It’s made up free lance musicians who love movies and movie music.” Since it was founded a decade ago, the orchestra had presented sold-out concerts of film scores throughout Europe, but only in 2008 did they venture to play a score live as a film was being show. 

Since then Wicki has given live-to-projection performances of the “Fellowship” score with the Munich Symphony, the Krakow Sinfonietta, the Wolf Trap Festival Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, and now, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. 

But how does a conductor coordinate the music of a live orchestra with the on-screen image? 

In the past Hollywood and every film studio recorded live music for their films with the aid of a click-track. The conductor synchronized his baton with a series of metronome-like audio cues coinciding with the moving image. Laterly, however, conductors, Wicki included, have been using a computer system with visual cues.”It utilizes a series of streamers, punches, and flashes, so I can keep the beat where it should be with the film,” he explained. 

Wicki’s career is not limited to film scores. He began as a trombone player and at some point he studied privately CSO trombonist Frank Crisafulli, at Northwestern University in Evanston. For nine years he was a member of the Lucerne Symphony and Opera Orchestra. 

Musician with brass

His love of chamber music inspired him to establish the San Marco Brass and the Philharmonic Brass Quintet in Switzerland and their repertoire included brass music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. After nine years as an orchestra member, he began to study conducting and is now music director of the Palace Chapel of Lucerne and Kapellmeister of the Hofkirke in Lucerne, where he leads choral and orchestral concerts. “It is the main church in Lucerne,” he said. “It has two towers and is very beautiful.” 

Canadian-born Howard Shore has scored some 80 films since 1979, including “The Silence of the Lambs,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” and “Philadelphia.” It was not until 2001 that his vast symphonic score for “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings” won him his first Academy Award. In 2003 he won two more Oscars for “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” 

The North American debut of his “Fellowship” score live to projection was given in April 2008 by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of one of his biggest fans. You guessed it — Ludwig Wicki.