Chris and I drove down to Portland over the weekend to catch the Portland Symphony performing Video Games Live. It was amazing. If you love video games and video game music, I cannot recommend this show enough. Video game music is an often underestimated art, both by people who play games and people who look down on games. Hearing pieces like One Winged Angel from FFVII performed by a full orchestra and a choir is mind-blowing. These pieces are composed brilliantly, and it is a shame that often their original media masks their true artistry. Take, for example, the Zelda suite.
My first experience with the Zelda music was when my brothers were playing Ocarina of Time on the N64. I liked the music even then, MIDI-fied as it was. Hearing some of the same music on the Wii with Twilight Princess was even better. Hearing it live, as it was meant to be played? Incomparable. (I was disappointed that they did not perform the Gerudo Valley Theme–it was my favorite piece from Ocarina of Time. Maybe the next time I see the show, they’ll play it.)
Video Games Live was also an amazingly sneaky way of getting people to go to the symphony who ordinarily wouldn’t attend. There was a costume contest (won by a tiny Princess Zelda). There was a Guitar Hero contest beforehand, and the winner of that had the chance to come up on stage and play a song, live, with the symphony as backup, and the promise of a pretty sweet prize if he managed to score 100,000 points on the selected song. (He won. Easily. Little shit, being way better than me at Guitar Hero. Grumble grumble.) An audience member was selected to play Space Invaders, with HIMSELF as the right-left sensor, while the orchestra played the background music and changed it according to how well he was doing. People got to yell “Wooooo!” I think the Portland Orchestra has probably never been “Woooooo!”ed so much in their lives before this. Hopefully some of the kids who attended will leave thinking classical instruments are pretty awesome. Hopefully some of the attendees will go back to the symphony for other performances. (Hopefully the symphony members didn’t think we were all completely insane!)
In short, Video Games Live is made of WIN AND AWESOME. Go see it if you can.
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