I had the luck of being able to go to a concert of theTolkien Ensemble in Neuss, Germany - because my Sindarin study partner lives across the Rhine in Düsseldorf and she arranged the tickets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QqcyuWHW9o
It was great! They are musically very good - I think most are professional symphony orchestra members and most of the music is very close to how I perceive the Legendarium. Examples are the songs that I made my video's of Beren and Lúthien, and Eärendil to. I talked to Nick Keir, the guy who sang that last song; and he told me that that song was the hardest he had ever sung. It was a bit of a pity they did not do those songs: the program was centered on LOTR and leaned somewhat on Howard Shore's score; the other half being more their own (Caspar Reiff's) compositions who are definitely very Irish-folky, or maybe Hobbit-like in character. Songs like There is an inn, a merry old inn are very catching, funny and lovely.
We had a stroke of luck: at one point one microphone amp blew up and after two un-amplified songs (Namarië and Pippin's All Shall Fade) they paused the show to allow for repair. Meanwhile, the soloists started to joke around and eventually were encouraged by the audience to improvise a bit - which they did. We got a couple of treats from the accordionist, the violinist, the harpist and eventually the choir who sang an amazing Russian song.
I tried to record the whole thing on my phone, which worked a lot better than I had hoped. It's mono and at places a bit muffled, but a good memory nevertheless
