The Tolkien Ensemble

 I'm a big fan of the YT channel Clamavi de Profundis, I've featured at least two of their songs here previously. However, I've recently discovered another channel that also does amazing interpretations of The Professor's material, the Tolkien Ensemble. While Clamavi did a bang-up job of arranging 'The Dragon is Withered' from the Hobbit (completely redeeming it in the process, IMHO), the Ensemble group is a lot more clasical in its sound, and their arrangement of Tom Bombadil's song is just sublime. They also did an exquisiste job on Galadriel's Song of Eldamar, which deserves an epic video all on its own. Their version of 'A Merry Old Inn' is really good, and Sam's Troll Rhyme is strangely close to the tune I imagined for it - which is wondrous strange.

Have a listen to their album 'An Evening in Rivendell', which has all those tracks, and more besides. Link

 From their channel description:

The Tolkien Ensemble is a Danish ensemble which aims to create "the world's first complete musical interpretation of the poems and songs from The Lord of the Rings". They published four CDs from 1997 to 2005, in which all the poems and songs of The Lord of the Rings are set to music. The project was approved by both the Tolkien family and HarperCollins Publishers. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark gave permission to use her illustrations in the CD layout. Permanent members are Caspar Reiff and Peter Hall, Signe Asmussen, Øyvind Ougaard, Katja Nielsen, and Morten Ryelund Sørensen. The Ensemble has toured Europe in 2007, combining their own works with soundtrack pieces from Howard Shore's soundtrack to the film trilogy as well as live narration by Christopher Lee.

New Ironwood Staff background

 Now that I've finished serialising chapter extracts from The Ironwood Staff on Subscribestar, I'm serialising some of the backstory to the two books. This stuff was written down longhand all in a rush over the course of a few days, once I'd heard Mike Oldfied's Music of the Spheres. I have absolutely no clue how or why it sparked that in me, but I am a long-standing Oldfield fan, since my early 20s.

We had our origin the Place of Awakening, before the Sun and Moon. There are none now who remember it, the chances of the World have taken them all.

My grandfather’s grandfather lived in the ages of starlight. He remembered the Place, and how he and so many others fled at the coming of a being of light and power. Some stayed, and none know what became of them.

Of those who escaped, many were lost. There were shadows beyond the hills of the Place, and they came for the eladi in the dark. It was a time of terror, when one heard screams and pleading, sometimes cut short, sometimes the screaming and weeping would fade as the eladi were taken away. There were children then who lost their parents as they lay hidden, shaking in terror. As they lay in the bush, too scared even to breathe, Father Dorwin appeared, seeking the scatterlings. He had fled with them, but was strong and agile enough to fight off the nameless things that sewed the dark into a trap, and cut through it all. Father Dorwin saved so many in that time.

It may have been that he wished to return to the Place; but it was surrounded by forest, haunted by the Things In The Dark, but he perceived them and took them south.

Read the whole thing here. I'm having work done on a second edition as well, which should hopefully make the book more marketable and easier to read.

Silverion Camps

 A fellow member of the Bard School, Dan Cote Davis, is interviewed at The Myth Pilgrim.

Dan has an amazing vision for young people (he's a teacher IRL), which includes using the Tolkien vision of beauty as a means of drawing young people into the church. He started the Silverion camps in New Zealand, and there's a great promo for them here.