Throw in Yamaoka and this will be less a trip than a pilgrimage.

Most of the Stockholm show recording sounded pretty good. From what I've listen to so far, the only really bad piece was Theme of Laura. Can't wait to see the Toronto show!

For those of you that wanted to compare Stockholm's "Theme of Laura" to Chicago's excellent one, there's a video on YouTube of Akira Yamaoka in his now-legendary snakeskin suit.

"PLAY: Theme of Laura (with Akira Yamaoka)"*

It was definitely a VERY unique experience hearing a symphony playing along with drums and a very very loud electric guitar.


*NOTE: Since I don't have enough posts to post URLs yet, just type that above string into YouTube's search and it should be the only video you find.

Already linked.

Well the Detroit concert has ended, I'm talking to Cow from KHU website and hes gonna put up his report on the concert on Friday, along with photos. His video interview of Shimomura needs to be send to PR people, but after that, we will see it! This is a rare opputunity that a fan site gets to talk to Yoko for the first time!

Oh and if anyone who has gone and has recorded the Shadow of Colossus track, please post here, as we would all love to hear it.

Question for those who have attended the concerts that have passed already...about how long is the concert? My brother and I are planning on taking the Amtrak to philadelphia from new york and the concert starts at 8:30..just wondering about what time we'd get out so we can plan a schedule or something..thanks

Very nice rip of the concert, though there are some annoying noises like sound of cough in the Liberi Fatali. @_@
but overall, the quality is beyond I thought. very good.

So the Zelda suite is a rip-off of Ryuichi Katsumata's string orchestra arrangement!? That's very disappointing. Because the Super Mario Bros. suite sounded very similar to the Orchestral Game Concert arrangement with the Super Mario World "Title" theme and a few Super Mario 64 pieces thrown in. Also, the "Super Mario 64 Main Theme" arrangement didn't sound so hot... and his attempt at "Stage Boss" was terrible - at least from the low quality recording I heard.

What really would've kicked ass is if Kondo performed "Ultimate Bowser" or "Inside Ganon's Castle" at the Chicago show - they both would've been nice still on the piano or an electric piano on the organ setting. But then, I'm sure it was intended to be a plug for NSMB.

Hi, is it true that they only perform live and no soundtracks will be released?

Kairi Li,

I was Cow's camera-man in the interview with Shimomura ;). I also handed her a cd with a few of my piano works on it. She was quite flattered and asked me a few questions about it. I was surprised to see how much interest she had in my project. I'm just waiting a reply from Ms. Shimomura to see if she liked the music :D. I will be writing a complete and fully detailed review for Squaresound and Square Enix Music.com.

It's too bad that the website that offered the whole KHII soundtrack for download after its release got a chance to talk to its composer. I doubt Mrs Shimomura knew that while she was interviewed.

All the music is took down so it doesn't matter anyway. They took all of them down before they contact the PR people of the concert.

And many fansites offer mp3s anyway, if not the whole OST, then weekly mp3s. There really is not stopping it, at least KHU took them down before approaching the idea of an interview.

Can't wait to read your report Josh!

Sweet Josh. I wonder if Square Enix will release album of your arrangement months later. Did you talk to Shimomura in english?

Eriol,

Actually, I did speak to her in english. Of course, Shimomura spoke only Japanese (except for some english formalities like "Thank you very much" and "Pleased to meet you"). However, there was a translator, so everything was alright :).

I'm so excited for you Josh, I can't say it enough. Be sure to keep us posted at SS and SEMO!

*still waiting for Cow's interview on KHU*

I spoke to Cow and the first part of the concert report should be up tomrrow.

And has anyone recorded the Detroit concert? I like to hear how the performance for Shadow of Colossus was like.

I went to the concert in Stockholm. Drove 20 hours in 2 days just to see it. Got Nobuo Uematsus autograph as well =D

Loved the concert utterly btw

I'm so psyched for the Philly concert tomorrow night. Anyone else from GFF going?

Oh, and...

PLAY! to feature music from famous Castlevania-series

That's awesome to hear.

What's not awesome to hear is that the Philly concert will feature music from "Prey." I have no idea how Prey's music is (or what it's like), but I can't help but feel like we're getting gypped when other cities get stuff like Shadow of the Colossus and Castlevania. Oh well.

Just got in from the Philly concert a little bit ago. I'm gonna be lazy and copy and paste my post from another forum, since it's so late, and I don't feel like writing more.

Yeah, I was bummed about Prey being Philly's exclusive music. I hadn't known it was Soule, though. It was ok.

I figured they would do an encore, I just wasn't sure what it would be. The Blue Dragon theme was a neat little piece.

That's my feeling too. It was really neat, but I think, "this should have been better" and "that should have been like this."

They should show more game video on the big screens, and less playing. Or, they could continue to show playing on the left and right screens and have game video on the middle screen.

They show almost every game, but NOT CHRONO?! It was a huge disappointment to hear Frog's Theme being played and not see him on the screen. No Final Fantasy footage either. Maybe it has something to do with Squaresoft licensing?

Everything needed to be louder.

The Zelda medley was my favorite, though like almost every other medley, I wish it was longer and contained more songs. It was great to hear the Chrono Trigger theme. Reminscence ~Thoughts Not Extinguished~ (pretty sure it's that one, it was a nice piano song) was a very nice surprise as the Chrono opener; I didn't expect them to play that one. The Shenmue music was pretty; my friend liked that the best besides Zelda.

I was disappointed by Halo as well. First off, the men were singing with vibrato at the beginning. That should have just been sung straight; there's no vibrato there. That was kind of minor, though. The more major thing was that the song simply wasn't as powerful as it should have been. As I said before, everything should have been louder.

I was disappointed by the Chrono medley as well. It was my most anticipated part, and I felt that it was too short and frankly, not as powerful/emotional as it should have been. The transition to the Celtic part in Time's Scar was almost a trainwreck as far as the instruments being together. I expected to hear all of To Far Away Times, and we only got to hear the very end.

So, they only play a few songs from Chrono, Halo, and such, and then they play like 10 minutes of World of Warcraft music. What's up with that? :-/

Still a really neat experience overall. It was such an odd atmosphere, seeing all these kids, teens, and young adults everywhere; certainly not your normal symphony crowd. It was kind of neat in a way though, as was everyone laughing/cheering at the old-school Mario and Zelda clips.

Though I have my complaints, it's great that game music has come far enough to have two dedicated concert tours (this and Video Games Live). I thought it was cool in a way to be having a "world premiere" of a video game score being played by an orchestra. Here's hoping this new awareness and acceptance of vgm continues to grow and leads to many more events like this.

YES. Keep the good news coming, PLAY!. Justify my plane ticket!

I wonder what Castlevania songs will make the cut. It'd be interesting to see something like "The Tragic Prince" make it into an orchestra arrangement. Though considering the Kingdom Hearts suite apparently leaves out songs like "Destati", I guess it's most likely to just be a main theme or two. :/

Yeah, my friend (a big KH fan) was very disappointed with the KH suite. They played the two Japanese pop themes (as he calls them) - Simple and Clean and Passion - and perhaps part of one other songs I didnt' recognize.

It'll interesting seeing what Castlevania songs they choose to play.

I had a Law exam, so I couldn't make it to Philly concert. Everytime I drive by the Mann, I'm gonna be reminded of this missed opportunity... T_T

So, the Toronto show is coming up, anyone in the area buy tickets yet, or are planning?

My friends and I want to go but the tickets are at $55-$125. And to people who has already seen previews shows, what is the best area for the price?

Hi guys,

Eminence is not really at friendly terms with PLAY! however I can enlighten some stuff with you, maybe it may serve to answer some of your questions.

We have the same problems with this. Many game companies, especially the biggest do not license video nor images to video game concerts as they themselves could probably hold concerts and make a disgusting amount of profit from it. However, if we were in PLAY!'s shoes, our goal is the concert. You pay money to listen to a concert, not watching FMAs nor clips from games. Eminence believes that in concert situations, these video's support the concert and is by no way, the main attraction at all. The main focus should be placed on the musicians...

At the same time, PLAY! hires out orchestras who are very much likely to be NOT FAMILIAR with games nor are they INTERESTED in games. In fact, I know for a fact from several top game music composers who were actually invited to PLAY! found the musicians and even some of the organisers rude and disrespectful, perhaps even been thought as a second class musician. We do not respect that kind of attitude, although you may have not noticed it, these musician that just performs for you just out of being paid, makes us sick.

On the other hand, we've had people complaining that the visuals and performance are not synchronised in Eminence's concerts. I'm pretty sure (correct me if I'm wrong) but same goes with PLAY! A real live symphonic concert do NOT synchronise music with what goes on screen. To perform from the depth of one's soul... you do not just synch. However, on the other hand, one can say Video Games Live does it! We consider VGL a new form of entertainment, not necessary a pure symphonic concert. If you have seen the video of the musicians, they are all wearing half headphones. These are called "Clicktracks" used in movie soundtrack recordings, so the musicians will be strictly in time. Actually, they don't even need a conductor when they have a clicktrack but hey, it's great to see him there ^^ That's why they are completely synched. Synchronisation is not a bad thing at all, it's just VGL is a completely different type of entertainment to that of PLAY! and Eminence. Actually, people enjoy it so it's good isn't it? Just don't expect it from pure Symphonic Game Concert.

Correct. Square Enix never license their FMAs unless it's their own official concert. What PLAY! did, even on their official website with Rinoa on a screen is completely illegal and a fraud. What's more, I'm not sure if they used Final Fantasy in their booklet... but from the information we got from Square Enix, that is also unlicensed.

Yes, but this is a symphonic concert, not a rock concert. Perhaps, to make it become a complete recreation of what you saw on your screen at home, you need to see it at home. This is a concert setting and if you want to respect the composer's will of a live performance, shouldn't be amped (unless there are balance issues).

Please don't blame Mitsuda-san. That was not his arrangement, all done by PLAY! who probably don't know the piece as much as you guys, neither does he care. He/she was probably just paid and was told to "hey you, orchestrate this was this, this and that theme."

Orchestral arrangements and transcription takes time and money. Blizzard is great in the sense that they will give you all the needed sheet music to play. Straight from the box. However, what PLAY! failed to do was to balance the programme length. Of course, we at Eminence fails to see all the opinions of others and do not play enough of some titles etc, on the other hand, PLAY! is a deliberate action to keep costs down in terms of arrangements and transcriptions. This is disappointing to see because many of the freelance composers in Japan are very willing to provide as much material to support a very good arrangement environment...

So in all, they can do this and succeed because they have no competition. Video Games Live, imho, is a completely different stance to that of PLAY!. VGL is a show, a great entertainment. PLAY! is a symphonic concert, just like what we do at Eminence, however, the main difference is PLAY! is doing this for financial gain, at Eminence, everytime we hold a show to crowds of over two thousand, we still make a huge loss because we do not charge so much to our audience who are mainly College students and ticket revenue only covers a fraction of the cost in our expenses as we put a lot of rehearsals in, think a lot about the programming of the music and we make sure that great transcriptions and arrangements are made months in advance. Why do it? Just to achieve our goal of that one extra person to be able to hear this music by a passionate symphony orchestra, nothing more. Also, we're the only professional orchestra in the world that specialise in Symphonic games and anime music.

Anyhow, if you want to know the insides of a symphonic game concert, video game music (Japan only... dunno much about the west besides Blizzard) ask and I'll try and answer it best way I can. I believe that the truth must be known! :)

I've got my ticket, and I'll be in Toronto for a few days before and after the show. Gonna visit friends and do some wandering around.

For the people who have been to the previous PLAY! concerts; do there tend to be pre-show gatherings and media events and things? I remember seeing footage of either PLAY! or VGL having an autograph signing session at a music store the day before the concert, which included some fan musicians showing up and playing game music for people waiting in line. If it WAS PLAY! that did that, do they tend to do it for all the concerts?

Amanda, I read something about that before... did you find any news?

Anywho, WOOT! Can't wait.

PS. Do they sell CDs there?

edit: How much do the pamphlets cost?