At the end of 2022 I was contacted by the producer of a Cleveland, Ohio performance of Howard Shore's award-winning score of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. You can read more about these concerts here. https://www.lordoftheringsinconcert.com The score which includes a full orchestra, choral groups and soloists calls for a monochord. They didn’t have one so they reached out to me to see if I would lend them one. I have recently been building a fair number of these. Ultimately they bought one in the Key of F and used it in the Cleveland concert. Apparently the conductor Ludwig Wicki and sound engineer Paul Bevan were impressed and contacted me after the performance to explore the possibility of building a custom monochord more suitable for the needs of ongoing performances. After a lot of back and forth, they ultimately settled on a monochord large enough to offer three different keys (F, G, and D) creating three different monochords on one acoustic box subsequently dubbed a Trichordian. Each key has 16 strings creating an instrument with 48 strings. I completed one just in time for four Radio City Music Hall performances in Feb of 2023. Although I haven’t been able to get any documentation of its use, according to Paul it was a successful contributor.
