Last night, Anita and I rushed back from a day of scrambling up a mountain (photos to come), cleaned up, wolfed down supper, and made it with just minutes to spare to Play! A Videogame Symphony, performed by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra at the Jack Singer Concert Hall. And was it frickin' awesome! Presented in two parts, the first was a tribute to the classic Japanese composed pieces of music that accompanied some of the most celebrated video game series in history (Super Mario and Zelda, anyone?), to name a couple. Any kid who grew up in the 80's would remember the theme music to these titles, so you can imagine the feeling of nostalgia and awe when you hear these iconic pieces, played out in live, full, rich orchestral depth. Instant Nerdgasm!
The second half of the show transitioned to the more European and North American fare, featuring the scores to more recent games which Anita and I had heard of (World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Halo: Reach), but were largely unfamiliar with. The pieces of music were very epic and bold in sound, and were an interesting contrast to the previous Japanese pieces. There were very distinct nuances and feels between the two, which my non-musically trained brain find hard to describe adequately. But as Anita put it - the Japanese pieces were beautiful and very distinctive from each other, while the American pieces (although epic) all sounded the same.
And as an encore, they played this score from the 1994 classic (and one of my two favourite RPG's of all time), Final Fantasy VI. Enjoy:
The second half of the show transitioned to the more European and North American fare, featuring the scores to more recent games which Anita and I had heard of (World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Halo: Reach), but were largely unfamiliar with. The pieces of music were very epic and bold in sound, and were an interesting contrast to the previous Japanese pieces. There were very distinct nuances and feels between the two, which my non-musically trained brain find hard to describe adequately. But as Anita put it - the Japanese pieces were beautiful and very distinctive from each other, while the American pieces (although epic) all sounded the same.
And as an encore, they played this score from the 1994 classic (and one of my two favourite RPG's of all time), Final Fantasy VI. Enjoy:
I am currently playing FF6 in Japanese! *tear*
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