Play!

I went to Play! A Video Game SYmphony last night at Benaroyal Hall. Play! is a group that is also touring around the country with video game music. I guess they are kind of a rival to Video Game Live. The show actually is alot more formal than Video Game Live. It was held in a proper concert hall with a proper traditional orchestra and the Northwest Boys Choir. They didn't have any fancy light shows, just 3 jumbotrons that showed close up of the musicians along with video game footage. So it was a much more proper concert than VGL. I really enjoyed it because the arrangements was wonderful. The setup that lets you see the musicians up close makes it really interesting because you don't usually think about which instrument produced that chime, or that sequence of melodies when you are listening in the game.

The setlist included the requisite Final Fantasy suites -started with Liberi Fatali and ended with One Winged Angel (quite appropriate :)) . The NW Boys Choir was amazingly good. They sounded just like the soundtrack. they had such good harmony and tone, not to mention they had to stand for the entire concert even though they only had to sing in 4 songs.

There was also the Super Mario and the SOnic the Hedgehog tracks which elicited lots of laughter. But the most exciting thing was they did an arrangement of Battlefield 1942!! DunX5 FTW!!! I was so excited I Had to call Velius before the show to tell him haha. THe funny thing is that although they were playing DunX5, the footage they show is actually from BF2, specifically DaQing Oilfield jet battle. I was like "wait a minute, there are no jets in 1942!!". It brought back good memories :)

There were two surprises during the concert, the first is that Jeremy Soule was there. The conductor presented him after the Oblivion suite. I think the Oblivion suite was the best segment of the show. The orchestra did an amazing job with the music and they showed all the cool footage from the game (ahh reminds me of all the headaches I went through for that game). I am sure Jeremy got mobbed after the show. he got huge applause and screams. The second surprise is that they did a Guild Wars suite near the end which wasn't even on the program. Now that really brought back memories hehe.

Couple other little things:

During the Wow segment, the video they showed was the opening from WarCraft 3 heh!

They did this really modern rock music for Silent Hill 2, with an electric guitar solo which turned out to be a keyboard imitating an electric guitar. Man it sounded really really good.

In the end, it was a really good night and I really enjoyed the concert.