Halo Theme at Video Games Live

Not sure which performance date this was from, but enjoy the Halo theme performed by the Video Games Live concert orchestra.

 

Piano Squall's Final Fantasy Battle Medley

Here's another great Piano Squall piece, a 10 minute long clip featuring all of your favorite battle themes from the various Final Fantasy's. Piano Squall is simple fantastic!

Xenogears June Mermaid on Piano

Omg - you have no idea how much I love this song. NOO idea. I was a complete nut about Xenogears, and this music still gives me chills. Enjoy!

Xenogears Medley on Piano

It's really hard to find Xenogears music on instrumentation. I'm not entirely sure why - Mitsuda is an incredible composer. I was glad to find this Xenogears medley done by Kishino.

Say Hello to Piano Squall

You might have seen a cosplay Squall at conventions before. What you might not have experienced is the pure passion and energy this man has at the piano. Here's a sampling of his piano and piano renditions of Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, and Xenogears.

Wonder how he got started? It's simple: from the Youtube comments:

Well, for what it's worth - it wasn't really a gimmick... He was just a Squall cosplayer at cons, until some of my friends found out he played piano really well and had him play at a piano we found at BAAF 03 in the Mariott Marquis... and some people from AnimeNEXT overheard and invited him to play there, very informally... and so on and so forth. He wore his Squall cosplay as always and people just started knowing him as "Piano Squall,"

 

Forever Rachel on Piano

I haven't actually seen this done in an orchestral setting, but Forever Rachel from Final Fantasy 6 is one of my absolute favorite pieces of all time.

Shadow of the Colossus as performed by Eminence Orchestra

I typically try to stay on top of all of the video game music performance groups, but I sadly haven't heard of Eminence - until now. This Australian based orchestra had their debut concert back in 2004, with their A Night in Fantasis concert. Their mission is to increase interest in classical music through a medium that many younger folk can relate to - video game music.

From their site:

"The aim of this new-wave contemporary Orchestra is to inject something bold, dynamic and fresh, into something that’s slowly losing its general appeal.

We wish to challenge ideas of what orchestral music is all about, by aligning it to something familiar to younger audiences. We want young people to really “hear” orchestral music. We believe in the strength of this music and that younger people will really connect with it.

Classical music must not be left to languish in dusty corners or to be appreciated only by an older demographic. It needs to find a new face and be aggressively showcased into expanded genres and permutations in order to capture a larger audience. This said we do not want to limit our audience to young people, only to encourage them to join in as well as to expand the audience.

We feel passionately that young people must move away from TVs and Computers and get out and listen to ‘live’ music. This music can be a catalyst for younger people to explore symphonic music in more depth and appreciate it better.

This is not to devalue Bach and Beethoven, but take the best from the past, build on it and position it in a contemporary setting. This is the Silverchair of Classical!

Like the Beatles, creating musical history is about breaking new ground, doing what hasn’t been done before. "

The Man, The Legend - Nobuo Uematsu

There are so many things I could say about Uematsu-san. He has influenced countless people with his amazing compositions in the world of video game music, and he has also affected me on a very personal level. My desire to go into the world of classical music was spurred on by Uematsu-san's stirring music. I desired to play to the level that his haunting, uplifting, and mesmerizing melodies took me.

Alas, life works in funny ways and I ended up in a writing career instead. That does mean that I can wax poetic on my favorite composer of all time, though! Here's a quick biography on this amazing man (from the Wikipedia article).

Born in Kochi City, Kochi prefecture, Japan, Uematsu began to play the piano when he was twelve years old (his greatest role model early in life was Elton John) and is a self-taught musician. After graduating from Kanagawa University (his major was not a music degree), he composed music for commercials before joining Square Co., Ltd. (now Square Enix Co., Ltd.) in 1986. He went on to compose music for over thirty game titles, including the award-winning Final Fantasy series. In October of 2004, Uematsu formed Smile Please Co., Ltd. and continues to compose for Square Enix along with several other companies.

Uematsu has written a column, "Uematsu Nobuo no Minna Sounano?", for popular Japanese gaming magazine Weekly Famitsu for several years. Two compilations of the columns have been released. Additionally, Uematsu signed to finish the Chrono Trigger soundtrack after his friend, Yasunori Mitsuda, contracted stomach ulcers ([7]).

Uematsu currently lives in Japan with his wife, Reiko and his dog, Pao.

While he is best known for his work in video games, Uematsu's work spans a wide-range of outlets. Some of those works include composing the theme song for the anime film Ah! My Goddess The Movie and writing music for top Japanese vocalists such as Emiko Shiratori and Rikki.

After a string of successful concert performances in Japan including a six-city, seven-show concert series titled "Tour de Japon – Music from Final Fantasy", the first stateside concert, "Dear Friends - Music from Final Fantasy", followed May 10, 2004 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California selling out in three days. The performance featured music from world-renowned Final Fantasy video game series, performed by the acclaimed Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale and conducted by Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra director Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Due to the positive reception for this performance and clamor from fans for more, a concert series for North America was to follow.

During 2005, he toured the United States with his concert Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy.

As of 2006, his music from Final Fantasy was presented in a concert entitled "Voices: Music from Final Fantasy" that took place on February 18 at the Pacifico Yokohama Conference and convention centre. Star guests included Emiko Shiratori, Rikki, Izumi Masuda and Angela Aki. The concert focused on the vocal songs from the Final Fantasy series and was conducted by the American Arnie Roth. At this concert, Nobuo Uematsu confirmed his participation with Play! A Video Game Symphony he wrote the official opening fanfare for. Play! is a symphonic world-tour featuring video game music, including Final Fantasy. Uematsu, along with long-time friend Yasunori Mitsuda and other composers such as Koji Kondo, Akira Yamaoka, and Yuzo Koshiro, was in attendance at the world-premiere of Play! A Video Game Symphony in Chicago on May 27, 2006, the European debut in Stockholm on June 14, 2006 as well as the Canadian performance in Toronto on September 30, 2006. His music from the upcoming Mistwalker game Blue Dragon was performed, as well.

 

In 2003 Uematsu formed The Black Mages and released an album of specially arranged versions of his classic Final Fantasy pieces. The Black Mages, in which Uematsu himself played organ, are a group of technically accomplished rock musicians who reinterpreted and expanded on the original compositions found in the series. In the same year, for the first time ever, his music from Final Fantasy was performed in a Symphonic Game Music Concert outside of Japan. It took place as the official opening ceremony of Europe's biggest trading fair for video games, the GC Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. Another symphonic concert at the GC Games Convention featuring Final Fantasy music took place in 2004 and 2006 again. The concert in 2006 featured a world-premiere of Final Fantasy VI - Dancing Mad, performed by orchestra, choir and pipe organ.

Uematsu's music has been a large part of the Final Fantasy franchise's great popularity in the United Kingdom and the United States.[citation needed] In the 2004 Summer Olympics, the United States synchronized swimming duet of Alison Bartosik and Anna Kozlova won the bronze medal using two of his pieces from Final Fantasy VIII in the second half of their routine.

In early 2005, The Black Mages released its second album, titled The Black Mages II: The Skies Above. This album also introduced an original soundtrack composed by Uematsu, entitled Blue Blast - Winning the Rainbow. Arrangements included Final Fantasy VIII's "The Man with the Machine Gun" and Final Fantasy X's "The Skies Above".

His company, Smile Please, will compose music for various video game companies, including Square Enix and Mistwalker.

He composed the main theme for the upcoming Wii game Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Though Uematsu has officially only been contracted to write one song, he has stated he would "definitely love to do more" if he were asked.

One Winged Angel by The Black Mages

If you don't know already, The Black Mages is Nobuo Uematsu's band. He is a vibrant composer that has brought much recoginition to video game music, and his work with Final Fantasy was what first made me fall in love with his compositions. See him in his natural element, immersed in this haunting rendition of One Winged Angel from Final Fantasy 7.

Aria di Mezzo Carattere

If you are any sort of Final Fantasy fan, you've experienced the pure joy that is the Opera scene in Final Fantasy 6 (originally released in the US as Final Fantasy 3 for the Snes). Here's a nice version of the redone version that was coupled with this lovely cgi clip of FF 6.

Welcome to Video Game Orchestras

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Selenia, and I absolutely love video games of all types. More importantly, I am completely obsessed with video game music. I used to go to school for music, so it has an even greater fascination for me than most people.

I'll be featuring some of the greatest video game orchestras and video game soundtracks in posts to come. I hope you see just how amazing our modern video game composers truly are - they deserve to be recognized as amazing contempory composers in their own right.