An Exclusive Chat with one of the Stars of the Tour! If you can't visit Middle-earth yourself, don't worry. Middle-earth may be coming to you. Composer Howard Shore is taking his "Lord of the Rings Symphony" to concert halls all around the globe, earning rave reviews along the way. It's a multi-media show featuring six movements of "L.O.T.R." tunes, plus visuals projected on screens that surround the performers.
One of the soloists is Norwegian vocalist Sissel Kyrkjebo (professionally known by just her first name). Already familiar to movie goers for her haunting work on the "Titanic" soundtrack, she performs "Gollum's Song" and "Into the West," and participates on many choral pieces.
Sissel began touring with the production in April. Speaking by telephone, she explains, “I was asked to do it one and a half weeks before that. That was the first time I ever met Howard. Everything was happening so fast. Everything has gone very, very fast.
“It’s such a treat to be part of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ family. I’m having so much fun. I love the music. The music, I think, is perfect for my voice. It suits my voice very well, and I get to sing both classical and pop songs.”
She also gets to sing in Elvish.
“Yeah!” she laughs. “They’ve given me a translation (of the lyrics), but it’s not always (like) I remember the different songs (verbatim). I have a kind of idea of what the song is about. It’s not always that I know it word by word, but I know the context and the spirit of the song, what the meaning of the song is. Very often, you just listen to how Howard has written the music, because the music is very descriptive. It describes the moods of the movies, the pictures that it’s written for. It’s very emotional.”
Sissel witnesses the power of the “Lord of the Rings” score on a nightly basis. “As an artist, I’m facing the audience. I’m sitting there (onstage) and I’m looking at the audience. I see the reaction of people when they listen to the music. It’s so fascinating. Some people, they just close their eyes and float along. Some people, they are so totally into it, you can see their eyes following every movement. And then you have people who start crying. You can see they are so moved and so touched by the movement, and I can't look at them or I start crying. It's very fascinating."
Just as the "L.O.T.R." movies exposed millions of new people to the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, these concerts are giving many fans an introduction to concert going. "I heard today that at these concerts, for 70% of the audience, it's their first meeting with a symphony," Sissel explains. "They've never been to -- and listened to --a symphony orchestra before. Seventy percent is quite a lot. There are also a lot of young people coming, because it's the back row tickets, the cheapest tickets, that go first. It's a totally new audience that comes into the concert halls, and of course, many of the symphony orchestras think this is great because this is a chance for them to give a younger audience the experience of listening to music. I've met young people who've said their first meeting with classical music was actually through scores, through movies, and then they get interested. They get captured by this great sound and all these movements. They start buying other classical albums."
And buying Sissel's records too, presumably.
"Maybe!" she laughs. "I wouldn't mind that!"
She confesses she didn't know much about "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy prior to participating in these concerts. "I've seen some of it. I was very captured by this fairy tale world. This is very close to the old fairy tales that are told by generations back in Norway. It's very similar to our myths, so I felt very comfortable with the line of the story. It's not hard to adapt to it as a Scandinavian, as a Norwegian. Also, for me, when I listen to the music, I get very easily moved as well. I just float along and sometimes have to wake up and say, 'Oh, I'm gonna sing now!'"
Fortunately for Sissel, the original novel is available in Norwegian. "Oh yeah," she says. "It is. I have to read it, I know. I have to get into it."
The movies are also adapted to suit Norwegian audiences. "They're subtitled. It's not like in Germany (where voices are dubbed). We get to hear the real voice of Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler and all the others. It's not like you have another voice. We have subtitles, so that's a good thing."
Even though she's new to the music and plot of "The Lord of the Rings," she did realize how popular they were. "Oh, yes. I was perfectly aware of that because in Norway, nearly a million people have seen the movies. I guess a part of that million is people who've seen them many times," she giggles, "but so many people have seen it. I guess it is because the way of telling the story. It's a little bit Gothic and the inspiration from the Middle Ages is very strongly related to what we remember from the stories that we tell and the traditions. You know, Tolkien could be Norwegian, the way he told the stories."
Contemplating her involvement with the "Lord of the Rings Symphony," Sissel admits, "It's fascinating but it's also a challenge. This is like a classical piece where I don't sing all the time. It's not like you have your own concert where you are on for one and a half hours and you sing all the time. I'm only in the second half. I sit and I wait, then my cue comes and I sing. Then I sit down again, and then I sing... You listen and follow the flow of the music, but you're not on all the time. It's a different way of performing for me, but when you're on, you're on, and you'd better be there!"
by Claude Flowers
