As video game music has become more popular (and more orchestra-compatible), symphonic concert performances of video game music have picked up quite a bit of traction. They are a way for symphonic venues to bring in new audiences and new revenue, and a way for people of multiple generations now to experience live performances of some of their favorite childhood music. The Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy symphony concert tour for example began in 2007 and has gone through five different iterations to include arrangements of music from the new games still releasing every few years. The current iteration includes music from the most recent game Final Fantasy XV with music composed by Yoko Shimomura. Distant Worlds is currently doing a world tour to celebrate both the 35th anniversary of Final Fantasy and the 15th anniversary of the concert, and they even performed at Boston’s Symphony Hall in November with Yoko Shimomura in attendance.1
Concerts of video game music first began in Japan in the late 1980‘s and 90‘s. In the early 2000’s they began appearing on stages in Europe, with Thomas Böcker helping to put on one of if not the first European symphonic game music concert in Leipzig, Germany in 2003.2 From the very beginning these concerts brought in large and highly passionate audiences, whether they focused on music from a particular game or series, or played arrangements of various fan favorites. The concerts can also differ in how symphonically traditional the performances are; for example Böcker preferred his concerts to place the focus solely on the music and the orchestra as for many audience members these concerts would be their first symphonic experiences, whereas many other concerts and tours would include other content such as projections of game visuals (as does the Distant Worlds tour).3
Footnotes
- The tour included a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert of the Final Fantasy 35th Anniversary Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy Coral in November 2022, https://www.bso.org/events/final-fantasy-distant-worlds.
- Thomas Böcker, Melanie Fritsch, and Tim Summers, “Producing Game Music Concerts,” in The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music, edited by Melanie Fritsch and Tim Summers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021): 424–32, doi:10.1017/9781108670289.026.
- For more information on the origins of game music symphonic concerts, and what goes into putting them on, see chapter 24 ”Producing Game Music Concerts” featuring Thomas Böcker from The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music.
Image Credit: (Header) Final Fantasy 35th Anniversary, Distant Worlds cover of Concert program, 2022; Thomas Böcker, GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Boecker.jpg.