When I inform passersby and remote acquaintances that I am a video gaming culture columnist, I’m not surprised by the kind of looks and comments I get. A culture of gaming? Impossible. Games aren’t art. Normally I would have to take the time to explain the unique fusion of media, storytelling and interactivity that creates brand new worlds at a rate outpacing most enthusiasts’ ability to keep up. Now all I have to do is point them in the direction of Nobuo Uematsu, Arnie Roth and their latest creation: Play! A Video Game Symphony.

Play! is a symphony featuring music from classic and modern video games performed live on stage with a full orchestra and choir. New arrangements of classic themes, astonishing solo performances, and cut scenes played on large overhead screens were combined to create a memorable experience. One that drew an eclectic crowd, opened a few eyes, a threatens to leave a unique mark on the world.

When Worlds Collide

I had the privilege to attend the world premier of Play! A Video Game Symphony, on the night of Saturday May 27, 2006 at the Rosemont Theater in Rosemont, Illinois, and by privilege I mean I had to buy a ticket. Finally on the inside for a change I immediately knew how different an event this was with one look at the crowd milling in the lobby. It was as if that night’s event was a double feature of George Carlin and Luciano Pavorotti.

Veteran theater ticket subscription holders, dressed to the nines, mingled at the cash bar with the young gamer crowd. Themselves split between those who embraced the gravity of the occasion, and dressed the part, and those who embraced the spirit of the event and appeared in the uniform of the gamer: a gameskins t-shirts and blue jeans. Idle chatter included descriptions one’s progress in Elder Scrolls 4, to exchange of World of Warcraft names, stats and servers, but it never varied far from rhetorical questions asked in anticipation of the night’s event, even a dozen Pictochat users tapped out questions to each other in the silent noise of the DS’s wireless network.

Heroes of Music and Magic

The soundtracks of video games have for along time suffered from a lack of appreciation. While the music that accompanies the action is a vital and inseparable part of any gaming experience, it is much harder to truly recognize the amount of work that goes its production. The ethereal nature of music itself causes it to suffer, music can’t be held in one’s hands and felt, or hung on a wall and admired. When combined with the visuals and interactivity of a video game the music has the tendency to blend into the background, to create atmosphere more then to stimulate the mind directly.

However it has not gone ignored, or unpracticed. Shortly before the concert began, a small squad of security guards escorted about six people to seats in the middle of the theater. The crowd immediately erupted to riotous applause. These were some of the composers of the works we were going to hear that night, and this audience recognized them by sight. I was duly impressed. These were not just a group of musically talented people working on video games; to this crowd they were superstars. Throughout the night the conductor of the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra (and Play!’s Music Director) introduced them before their works were played. Among those in person were: Uematsu from Final Fantasy, Jason Hayes from World of Warcraft, Takenobu Mitsuyoshi of Shenume, Jeremy Soule from Elder Scrolls. Each received a standing ovation, the kind of appreciation one could never receive from just websites and message boards.

The concert itself was three hours that went by way too fast. Apart form the pieces listed in the program the world premier of this event was host to a few extra events. It featured a live performance from SMB’s Koji Kondo playing a piece written for the DS’s New Super Mario Bros. Japanese singer and songwriter Angela Aki accompanied herself on the piano performing English versions of “Eyes On Me” from FF8, and the new “Kiss Me Good-Bye” from the upcoming FF12. Ajrua Yamaoka brought the house down with his live electric guitar performance of the theme he wrote for Silent Hill. The lightning fast hands of Rony Barrak had the crowd mesmerized and he performed the “Arabic Theme” from Battlefield 1942 on a single darbouka, creating an impossibly complex sound. The biggest surprise was the premier of the theme from the highly antispated RPG Blue Dragon, the first collaboration from FF series originator Hironobu Sakaguchi, DBZ and DQ8 artist Akira Toriyama, and tonight’s star Nobuo Uematsu for the Xbox 360.

If scent is known as the strongest trigger for memory, music has to be a close second. Inevitability after the first few bars of a song were played the crowd would begin to murmur and laugh in recognition. Instantly they were transported back to the time they first heard that music, were it be to childhood with Super Mario Brothers, or earlier that same day with Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion.

Eyes Closed, Ears Opened

Play! A Video Game Symphony is more evidence of the impact that interactive entertainment is having on global culture. To have just one part of a video game experience celebrated in this manner clearly indicates a fundamental shift in what is considered art. This one event drew not only video game fans, but video game music fans, and fans of music in general. This was exemplified in the pair of gentleman I met who had flown in from Boston, Massachusetts solely for this event. They run a new site called Klondike Audio where they share their interest in video game music with the general music buying public by offering cuts from game soundtrack albums and providing links for their purchase.

I also met a woman named Bea, not a gamer herself, but a mother with two kids who found herself surprised when she recognized a tune coming from the orchestra. She had heard it many times coming from the home system of her children. Having heard dozens and dozens of music performances at that theater, she noted how similar in quality the music sounded to the works of the great masters.

If the infamous chanting theme from Halo or FF7’s “One Winged Angel,” both performed Play!, were slipped into the repertoire of a major orchestra, and played at an event, would it stick out? Would an infusion of the more classical style game music, invigorate a genre that hasn’t had a superstar draw a breath in 200+ years? The argument could be made now that video game music, imbedded in the games themselves, are the music industry’s biggest business anyway.

Play! wrapped up its one night premier in Rosemont, and packs its bags for a concert in Stockholm, Sweden. The international language of music never needs a localization team.

This is my stop.

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Back of the Bus is © 2006 by Seth “4:10” Robison, used with exclusive permission by gamertransit.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.