Gamemusic.net

From the first game music performance to the elaborate globe-spanning concerts of recent years, video game music concerts have come a long way. The current shows are organized with more breadth and scope than ever before. Every concert organizer has an unique artistic vision: his own method of translating video games to a concert hall environment, arranging and re-imagining much-loved tunes, and engaging and pleasing game music fans (a devoted audience that often possesses a deep, lifelong relationship to the material). Unsurprisingly, these approaches vary widely. On the one hand, we have Video Games Live, a stage show which concentrates on interaction with concert attendees. On the other hand, there are classical tours like PLAY! and Distant Worlds, which present a professional, fully orchestral approach to the niche game music genre. In contrast to Video Games Live’s spectacle-based approach, concerts like Thomas Boecker’s 2008 Symphonic Shades focus on creating a deep musical experience, presenting music from video games as a true form of art.

This year, Boecker developed Symphonic Fantasies, a concert event that continues this trend of musical aspiration. The shows, hosted in Cologne and Oberhausen, featured a variety of innovative elements that promised to bring video game music concerts into a completely new dimension. But was Symphonic Fantasies truly novel and transcendent? The three-person GameMusic.net squad traveled to Cologne, for the purpose of putting these claims to the test! Honestly, it would’ve been difficult to ignore this spectacle, which featured four big composers of the eastern genre: Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, Hiroki Kikuta, and Yoko Shimomura. Having this many big Japanese names at one European concert is a rarity - it’s a record that probably won’t be beat for some time.

Main stars of Symphonic Fantasies: Hiroki Kikuta, Yoko Shimomura, Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda.Main stars of Symphonic Fantasies: Hiroki Kikuta, Yoko Shimomura, Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda.

The unique quality of Boecker’s concerts stems from his unwavering desire to treat video game music with the utmost respect.  Ever since 2003, when Boecker presented his first Symphonic Game Music Concert, in Leipzig, in a Japanese gala-inspired format, the producer has continued to stage game music shows in innovative ways. Symphonic Fantasies further pushes the envelope - the show breaks with established concert conventions, and in doing so, propels video game music to a new level of artistic legitimacy. Unlike most of other video game music events, the organizers of Symphonic Fantasies show have refrained from placing big screens above the orchestra on stage. Normally, these screens are used to provide visuals from the featured games, and help accompany the soundtrack. By removing the screens, however, the audience is able to fully concentrate on the musical performance, with undivided attention.