Peter Hollens Misty Mountains: Songs Inspired by The Hobbit And Lord of The Rings (2016)

Peter Hollens is an American pop singer and producer best known for his work on YouTube as an a cappella artist. Hollens is a one man Pentatonix he sings ALL parts of every song then layers and blends them together. With over 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, his videos have over 140 million views and his creativity is prolific, releasing a new video every two weeks. Hollens has collaborated with some of YouTube s biggest artists including Lindsey Stirling, George Watsky and Tyler Ward.

The author discusses not only such classics as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, but focuses on Tolkien's minor works as well, tracing in detail the sources and influences - from pagan epic to Christian legend - which formed the foundation of Tolkien's masterpieces, his 'mythology for England'.

Stephen Sondheim's musical, inspired by the life and work of the French pointillist (or, as he preferred to be known, chromo-luminarist) painter Georges Seurat (1859-1991), is one of his most beguiling and challenging works, but one that won't necessarily appeal to every taste. The music is, on one level, an homage to Seurat's most celebrated painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," and could easily be the finest dramatization of a work of art and the life of an artist this side of Alexander Korda's film Rembrandt. But this is also a sweet, sad, profound, and ultimately elevating meditation on life and the creative process. Sunday in the Park with George moves with lightning swiftness between brittle passages, many centered on frustration, and soaring, achingly beautiful sections. It engages in a fair amount of wry comedy in the process, mostly at the expense of its characters, and, more importantly, the worlds of modern art, multimedia art, and new age music, among other '80s cultural fixtures.