CHANCE THOMAS

Composer for Film, Video Games & Television
 


SUMMARY BIO


Chance Thomas is an American composer, author, and entrepreneur.   His music has underscored both critical acclaim and commercial success, including an Oscar, an Emmy, and billions of dollars in sales worldwide.

 

Chance has composed music for some of the world’s most iconic entertainment properties, including:  Avatar, Marvel, Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons, King Kong, Star Wars, and many more.  

 

His most enduring creative adventure has been composing and producing original music based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy literary classics, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.  


Beginning in 1998, Chance undertook an extensive research project into the literature - identifying, cataloguing and correlating every reference to music, instruments, voices, songs, sounds, even how music affected people and places in Middle-earth.  


The resulting Tolkien Music Style Guide has helped navigate original music on over a dozen video game projects based on Tolkien’s writings, including The Lord of The Rings Online, The War of the Ring, and The Hobbit. 
The LORD of the RINGS

Original Music by Chance Thomas


Past Accolades


NEW YORK TIMES:  "Mr. Thomas's approach is ambitious... he has created distinctive musical themes for each of the epic's races."


GAME DEVELOPER:  "Music... drawn from the very pen of Tolkien's writings."


BEHIND THE AUDIO:  "Full of power and majesty."


MMOBOMB:  "The soundtrack for a new generation of Middle-earth-loving fans."


IGN:  "Vast, interactive, and equally epic."

Future Possibilities

What if Chance's music were reimagined, based on the lore and characters found in the LORD of the RINGS appendices...


E P I C   M I D D L E - E A R T H


C H A R A C T E R   T H E M E S

WAR & CONFLICT  

H I G H   F A N T A S Y

D A R K   &  F O R E B O D I N G

RUSTIC & EARTHY


MY THOUGHTS ON J.R.R. TOLKIEN AND MUSIC



Music is at the heart of professor Tolkien's epic tales.  In the Silmarillion's description of creation, the Ainur sang out into the void, and it was no longer void.  Music took preeminence over speech, optics, even matter itself.    


Tolkien's literary work is filled with songs, references to specific instruments, descriptions of vocal tone qualities, even the effect of music on the surrounding world.  


My own copies of the old professor's books are tattered and torn, worn out from reading, researching, cross referencing and making sense of every mention he made to music and sound in Middle-earth.  


Decades of immersion have steeped me in Tolkien's fantasy lore, its sights and sounds, its tales, and its peoples. I adore The Lord of the Rings, and I honor the extraordinary role of music within it.

 

Chance Thomas