The Gamer's Quarter

Lestrade · Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:16 pm Post subject: Play! A Motherfucking Symphony

It's official, as of five minutes ago, my wife and I bought tickets to see the Play! Symphony here in Toronto. I am excited like you wouldn't believe. On the website they added the line, "music from Castlevania has been added to the program." Holy. Fuck. Yes.

I'm pretty sure Nobuo Uematsu will be at the Toronto show, and if I'm really lucky, Akira Yamaoka will be there to play some Silent Hill guitar licks live. I think I may shit my pants if he is though; just a warning.

I can't think of a single item on the program that isn't going to loosen my bowels with joy, to be honest. What will I freak out over most? Halo? Silent Hill? Metal Gear Solid? (Please let it be the MGS2 theme... please...)

Anyway, I intend to update this thread with whatever I can leading up to and including the event. Thanks for letting me share.

Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

What?! Don't make threads for this kind of stuff. Make articles!

But yeah, that does sound pretty cool. Keep us updated in whatever way you please!

Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

If the price is reasonable I would also go to this. How much were your tickets and are they still available? I can't check on the site because of maintinence or some such.
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J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

The Gamasutra / FatPixels podcast interviewed Tallarico and the other guy last week after one of the shows. Interesting listen. If nothing else, they're passionate about what they do and they're basically self-made in a way that most people don't accomplish these days.
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OtakupunkX · . Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 730

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

A friend invited me to this, but I didn't want to drive 7 hours and pay that much.
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

Lestrade · Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:47 am Post subject:

Videogames Live and Play are two completely different events, yes. Tommy Tallerico will not be at Play.

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

Lestrade · Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:12 pm Post subject:

My tickets came in the mail yesterday. Only 29 days to go!

DoomsdayMC · . Joined: 06 Sep 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Saginaw,MI

I went to the Detroit show, it was good, but they skipped a couple of pieces. Crying or Very sad

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

DoomsdayMC · . Joined: 06 Sep 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Saginaw,MI

THe Crono cross, Prey, and Aries theme sets.

Lestrade · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 9:22 pm Post subject:

The show's tomorrow night. I can't wait.

Lestrade · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 9:50 am Post subject:

So between blowing stupid amounts of money on an Xbox 360 (finally) and damn-near filling it with downloaded demos, my wife and I donned our best evening wear and headed out to see the Play! show.

The place was packed, and conductor Arnie Roth and his crew did a great job. Overall the show was fantastic, but there were both happy surprises and some disappointments.

On the positive (and unexpected) side, ridiculously good percussionist Ronny Barak joined the orchestra, straight from war-torn Lebanon to lead the soundtrack to, ironically, Black. This may seem odd, but it was a true highlight; man can that guy play. As someone who enjoyed Black, hearing the deceptively engaging soundtrack live was a treat.

Unfortunately, later on Barak came back to join in a score that his sound just wasn't made for—Metal Gear Solid. This was one of the scores I was most excited for, and it was the biggest letdown. Re-arranged into a much faster-paced, beat-driven composition, Harry Gregson-Williams' larger-than-life score lost its fist-shaking, guilty-pleasure action-movie quality. What was interesting was how this new arrangement used the game-over music as a recurring element—unfortunately for me, I wanted to hear a huge-sounding, accurate rendition of the MGS2 theme, with all its contemplative peaks and valleys.

Another disappointment was—crushingly—the Silent Hill 2 theme. While this video of the Chicago show demonstrates Akira Yamaoka ripping through the song with beautiful precision, we weren't as lucky. The orchestra guitarist just wasn't up to snuff—his playing sounded inaccurate and was just ever-so-slightly off. The strings were beautiful though where they had to be, and at the song's big peak where it all congeals and then crashes down again, everyone performed wonderfully. Still, this track is all about the guitar, and Yamaoka's hand was sorely missed.

A pleasant surprise was the wonderful rendition of the score to Shenmue, which is of course a natural fit for an orchestra. Composer Tankenobu Mitsuyoshi was in the house, and after the Shenmue themes were played, he mounted the stage to... well... to just embarrass us all!

How, you ask? Well, in front of a live audience and an established classical orchestra, he took to the ivories and belted out a ridiculous one-man version, in full inexplicable Engrish, of the [url=http://www.secretspain.org/(daytona)lets_go_away.mp3]Daytona USA theme.[/url] My god. Making matters worse, his voice didn't even hold half the time. Now my wife and I can't stop yelling, "Day-TO-NAAAAAAAH YEAH!"

The orchestral version of Super Mario Bros. was familiar and well-rendered. It was hilarious to see the orchestra performing this while the three massive video screens ran footage of the games. Whenever some classic SMB1 footage was on-screen, the entire audience would erupt into sincere cheers and hollers.

And while Koji Kondo wasn't in Toronto, he recorded a message that was played on the screens above, introducing the Zelda suite. Again the audience exploded, and cheered uncontrollably whenever the screens showed Zelda 1 Link swinging his sword at Moblins.

By far one of my most favourite suites was, surprisingly, the Kingdom Hearts music. I loved because the orchestra managed to swing beautiful arrangements of not one, but all three Utada Hikaru songs into the suite. It was goose-bumpily good.

The newly-introduced Castlevania suite was actually very weak; while it opened with a rendition of "Vampire Killer" (of course), why Roth chose a very generic-sounding composition is beyond me. I mean, there is a Castlevania game called Symphony of the Night—any track from this would have made an explosive, wonderful orchestral piece!

Also on the just-a-bit-watered-down site was, unfortunately, Halo. One of the string sections (oh fuck I don't know; the baritone section? I lack music knowledge) wasn't loud enough, robbing the iconic composition some of its power. That and the choir really needed to be louder, more vibrant.

One suite where they didn't sound watered-down was the World of Warcraft suite. My wife actually winced as the orchestra went through the music—as if she doesn't hear it enough!

Of course, all the best music during the performance was from Final Fantasy. Suited to this environment, Nobuo Uematsu's compositions all sounded beautiful, big, and compelling. Indeed, FFVII mainstays like Aeriths' Theme and the final performance of the regular set, One-Winged Angel, were perfect. In fact, hearing the latter—and seeing it performed by a choir young enough to actually have played the game—made me think that this was a powerful moment for most people in the place.

And yes, Uematsu was in the audience! I saw him! I could have hit him with an acorn from where I was. My TGQ instincts were ignited; I wanted to give him a business card! But I was content to know that the man who has given me so much memorable music was there in the room with me and everyone else.

The final performance was greeted with a standing ovation, and our fanfare did not go unrewarded. Roth came out and conducted "just one more" piece—the main theme to Blue Dragon! It was a real treat, and a wonderful end to the evening.

Play!—the only symphony where the audience Picto-Chats with itself!