Every year, the Cleveland Orchestra puts on a movie score concert series. In the summer, they play at Blossom Music Center, a huge outdoor music venue that usually hosts popular artist. It’s got a pavilion with assigned seats and a massive lawn for first come, first serve general admission. If you’ve never been to this kind of show, the movie is stripped of it’s score and the orchestra provides the music live in time with the film. If you have a local orchestra who does this, I highly recommend going, it’s a unique experience.

Last year, my wife and I saw Jurassic Park and had a blast sitting out on the lawn, watching the movie, and listening to a John William’s score. For the last couple of years, they’ve been playing the Lord of the Rings movies in the summer, one each year. This weekend was The Return of the King.

When we saw Jurassic Park, the place was pretty empty. We’ve been there plenty of times to see popular bands so it was nice to be able to park close to the venue and have space around us on the lawn to spread out. Expecting a similar experience this year, we planned to arrive about an hour before show time to get some snacks and settle in before things started. When we got there we were shocked to see the sea of cars ahead of us. The closest parking options were in the back grass lots which are like a mile out.

Thinking about it now, it makes sense. While Jurassic Park is a classic it probably doesn’t have the mass appeal and/or fandom of something like Lord of the Rings. The Cleveland Orchestra has played Harry Potter movies as part of this series before and I’m sure that draws a similar amount of people. Blossom holds upward of 23,000 people and the place was packed an hour before the show. Fortunately, there were only two of us so we were able to slot in to a decent spot where we could see the orchestra and the screen.

I’m a fan of the Lord of the Rings as much as anyone who was a kid when the movies were coming out. It was all the rage in middle school. I saw all of them in the theater with my family and probably watched The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers dozens of times on DVD. Even still, I hadn’t seen either of them in at least 15 years. I only remember seeing Return of the King once.

With that in mind, my wife and I had a Lord of the Rings marathon last week so we could get caught up. We split the first two movies up over 4 days because neither of us are good at sitting through long movies these days. I’m glad we did, because I missed so much as a kid. I remembered the general plot lines and how cool all the battle scenes were but didn’t follow many of the side stories going on. There’s so much going on that’s not Frodo going to Mordor that blew past me all those years ago.

Like I said, I’ve only seen Return of the King once but, as I was watching the movie this weekend, I was surprised to find I remembered much of it. Not because I have a good memory, mind you but because I played the A TON of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on the Gamecube.

Shelob’s Lair, The Black Gate, the Battle of Helm’s Deep (technically the Two Towers), the Southern Gate, and the King of the Dead were all my favorite levels from the game. They all happen to be major plot points in the movie too. My wife also has fond memories of this game from playing with her brother back in the day. We kept turning to each other and saying things like “This level was hard” and “I remember fighting that guy so many times”.

Side note: this was the first “T” rated game I ever owned. I went with my dad to buy it and remember being nervous my mom would make me return it when she saw the rating!

Anyways, back to the show. If there’s one thing I took from this weekend, it’s just how much music is in the movie. There is a very small amount of overall time where there isn’t music of some sort accompanying the on screen action. I find it amazing that the orchestra play so precisely for so long. Of course, they are professional musicians but it’s still a feat to play for over three hours.

Not only do you need a full orchestra for this score you also need a full choir. The orchestra was great, don’t get me wrong, but hearing the choral scores from this movie live gave me goose bumps. The woman who did the vocal solos had an incredible range. I found that while the movie was going, I sometimes forgot there was a live orchestra but something about a live choir just sounds different enough that I noticed it every time.

Seeing a movie with thousands of people also brings with it a lot of audience interaction. We cheered for the musicians when they played our favorite themes or big, musical moments. We also cheered for the characters and storylines we saw on the screen.

The highlight of the night was during Theoden’s speech before the Riders of Rohan charge into the battle of Mines Tirith. The whole crowd yelled “Death!” in time with the movie at the end of his speech. It just added to the epicness of the scene and music.

If anyone’s interested in learning more about the music of The Lord of the Rings, Irecommend The SoundTrack Show’s three part series on the music of The Fellowship of the Ring (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). David W. Collin’s does a terrific job of explaining film scores and music theory even if you don’t have any background in music.

I’m not sure what will be there next summer with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy finished up. Whatever it is, I’m definitely going back. I would like to get pavilion seats next year to see the orchestra better. We’re considering going to see the Cleveland Orchestra play the Muppet’s Christmas Carol for the holidays later this year.