NEWS - Monday, December 22, 2003
VU Nabs Tolkien Music Director
Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) today announced that it has hired Chance Thomas as the Tolkien Music Director in charge of the creation and production of the musical themes for all of its video games based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Thomas has been honored by the Emmy Awards, Telly Awards, Aurora Awards,Vault Network Awards and many others during his distinguished career. Most recently, one of his projects, The Chubb Chubbs, won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film at the 75th Annual Academy Awards. The first game to utilize Thomas’ musical scores, The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring, a real-time strategy game for PCs, was released worldwide in November. In addition, Thomas was involved heavily in the music direction for The Hobbit, also released in November for all major console video game systems, Game Boy Advance, and personal computers. As the Tolkien Music Director for Vivendi Universal Games, Thomas has composed and produced a cycle of original thematic suites for the Lord of the Rings game series steeped in the lore of Middle-earth and produced with live orchestra, ancient acoustic instruments, and a choral ensemble from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The result is unerringly faithful to the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and aesthetically spectacular. "The depth of passion, energy, meticulous fine-tuning, hard work, and dedication that went into creating and producing the music at this level underscores VU Games’ commitment to a leather-bound edition vision of quality for the games in the The Lord of the Rings franchise," said Thomas. "I can’t wait until gamers hear the singers from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Black Speech of Mordor. It will make their hair stand on end and send shivers down their spines!" The musical themes were created to be used in several of VU Games’ The Lord of the Rings games simultaneously and perpetually in order to tie them together with a series of common musical threads. The themes will be quoted, varied, and used verbatim in a variety of ways across VU Games’ entire The Lord of the Rings video game lineup to bring greater authenticity and continuity to the entire series. About Vivendi Universal Games’ Tolkien Games Franchise As part of Vivendi Universal Games’ long-term agreement with Tolkien Enterprises to create interactive entertainment based on selected works of world-renowned fantasy novelist J.R.R. Tolkien, the company will publish original titles over the course of several years. The company’s currently announced Tolkien games line-up includes: The Hobbit, a third-person action-adventure game; The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring, a real-time strategy game for personal computers; and Middle-Earth Online, a massively multiplayer game for personal computers due in 2004.Source: http://news.zerovision.net/
