Howard Shore and Bear McCreary To Score Middle-Earth Series

For the last few days it was being reported that Howard Shore was in discussions to return to Middle-Earth via the Amazon TV series.  Now The One Ring is reporting that the ink has dried on the contracts for not just Howard Shore but also Bear McCreary to compose music for the series.  

Howard Shore, just in case didn't know, is the one behind all the music of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.  Bear McCreary has credentials nearly as long as Howard Shore but his focus has mostly been scoring video games (God of War) and TV (Battlestar Galactica, Snowpiercer, The Walking Dead). 

The collaboration should produce some great music.  While the division of labor has not been explained, Shore remains highly in demand so likely his involvement will be to help compose integrate his previous work into the new work so that it seems like a natural fit, while also creating new themes around characters and locations. My guess is he will help McCreary create the skeleton of the series sound while McCreary will do most of the heavy lifting with the episode to episode scoring work.