vism.net

Today, well technically last night, I attended the Final Fantasy concert held at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I was anticipating this for some time and was very excited. Nobuo Uetmatsu is the composer of the music for this popular video game series, and is a great influence on me and the video game industry. There is a worldwide recognition of his work by mainly videogamers, but I think events like this allow it to reach to more people. It’s great that music in videogames can be just as influential as in movies or musicals. I was a part of history, taking part in the first videogame concert in the United States.

First thing I remember was arriving at the concert hall. The building was very noticeable in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a very funky building with lots of large metallic pieces everywhere. You might recognize it from some car commerical I’ve seen before. Got inside and noticed a huge screen display that had a screen visible from every angle. The LA Philharmonic was tuning tuning their instruments.

At about 7:30 the choir walks into their places and the conductor stumbles in and they begin with Liberi Fatali from FFVII. After it finished, James Arnold Taylor, the voice of Tidus from FFX, comes in and gives an intro. He comes in at about every 3 songs to give a little talk and introduce the next 3 songs. I don’t quite remember the order of the songs, but I think it went like At Zanarkand, Terra’s Theme, Rydia, Love Grows, Vama’alla Flamenco, Dear Friends, Aeris’ Theme, Ronfaure, a medley of several songs (they played the Chocobo theme and it got some giggles and then a quick applause), a new piece from the FFVII Advent Children movies, and finally the song simply called Final Fantasy. I might have left something out, I’ll edit it if it comes back to me.

Then Nobuo himself came up to give a little speech and to many of our surprises he introduces Yoshitaka Amano and Hironobu Sakaguchi. Amano is the artist that designed some of the characters and alot of the artwork for Final Fantasy. Sakaguchi is the mastermind and creator of the FF series. They had a translator, and one funny point was when Amano was speaking he went on for ages and the translator obviously couldn’t remember all of it. After they finished and got seated we get one more song, One Winged Angel (w00t).

I had a great time. Before the concert and during intermission, I tried to go buy a program for my girlfriend. But the lines were so long it was impossible. We got one after the concert, got my girlfriend to talk someone into letting her cut in up front of the line to buy a program. Girls always get their way . Ran into a couple of friends I used to work with at Square, and we left and had dinner at a cafe. I enjoyed myself and would attend the next concert in a flash.