This one’s completely passed me by until today, but big fans of symphonic arrangements of Final Fantasy music will certainly be interested to learn that a new concert is coming next May. Dubbed Final Symphony, the concert will take place on May 30th at the massive Barbican Centre in the City of London, and will feature music from Final Fantasies VI, VII and X.
The concert is officially licensed and will see collaborations with both Nobuo Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu (indeed, the website promises a meet and great with the two series composers), and as it is not intended to compete with Distant Worlds, there will be some differences between the two productions: Final Symphony will not utilise video screens displaying game footage and cutscenes, and the music will be restructured into “entirely new, elaborate arrangements.”
Digging around the internet, I found an interview with producer Thomas Boecker conducted by Square Enix Music Online’s Chris Greening. The interview (conducted this past May, which goes to show how far behind I am on this one), gives us a bit of an insight into what we can expect. When asked by Mr Greening why the production would focus on just a few games, rather than follow Distant Worlds’ focus on the entire series, Boecker replied, “Currently, the music from Final Fantasy VII performed in concerts focuses on battle themes… But that game describes a dystopia with a strong, mature story rarely found in games to this extent, with complex characters… I feel that the game’s dark, romantic, melancholic, and hopeful story needs a better orchestral presentation to express what this game is all about.”
Dark? Melancholic? Oooh, please let there be an ‘Anxious Heart’ movement in there somewhere!
He continued, “So Final Symphony is indeed about telling the stories of the games, or the focus on certain scenes or happenings featured. The balance is very important to us, so that we can capture the atmosphere of the games. We believe that said balance can be only achieved by limiting the number of featured Final Fantasy parts to three.”
Personally, I quite like the idea of a greater focus on a smaller subset of Final Fantasy games, and it helps that VII and X are probably my favourite soundtracks from the series. I also love a great deal of the music from VI, and am hopeful the lack of battle themes won’t preclude the arrangers from performing an epic rendition of Kefka’s signature piece, ‘Dancing Mad’.
Either way, I’ve got my tickets booked, and I’d suggest if you’re interested you do so too.
Final Symphony official website:
http://www.ffsymphony.com/
Read SEMO’s interview with Thomas Boecker here:
http://squareenixmusic.com/features/interviews/thomasboecker8.shtml
Read my review of this month’s Distant Worlds at London’s Royal Albert Hall:
https://pushstartgaming.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/distant-worlds-london-a-celebration-25-years-in-the-making/
i am very much excited for this! and if i am being honest i have never heard of this until yesterday 😀 tho glad i did in time! i am very interested to hear the “entirely new, elaborate arrangements.” will be gr8 tho to hopefully hear some fav’s that wasnt played at the distant worlds show in london! should be a amazing night and counting the days down 😀
Yeah, I’m thinking this might well be the perfect companion to DIstant Worlds, what with greater focus on music from some of the more fan-favourite games. I’m really looking forward to seeing what they have in store for us – and hopefully meeting Uematsu and Hamauzu!
I bought the tickets for this the moment I found out – I was a huge fan of the Symphonic Fantasies when they performed in Germany.
I also went for the Distant Worlds concert held in Royal Albert Hall London for the past 2 consecutive years – what perplexes me is that I had to fight tooth and nail to buy the Distant World tickets as I only found out they were on sale after the opening sale date.
This, on the other hand, is getting minimal coverage from gaming websites, which is really saddening. I just checked the ticket sales – almost half the tickets are still available, and they’ve been on sale for about 2 weeks already!
What do you think is the reason for this disparity between popularity/ticket sales?? It’s such a shame that so many people aren’t interested in it, Symphonic Fantasies features what are easily my favourite video game music arrangements. (On an unrelated note, why aren’t they playing music from the Chrono series? I would give my right leg and arm to listen to Time’s Scar and Frog’s theme orchestrated live!)
Hi Jon, thanks for the comment.
I guess Distant Worlds is simply the more well-known of the two and most recognise Distant Worlds and see it as THE Final Fantasy concert. If it hadn’t been for a post I saw on another forum, I probably wouldn’t have found out about Final Symphony, hence this post – to try and get word out for those that would be interested.
The disparity in ticket sales is interesting, and I know what you mean – I missed last year’s DW because I found out a couple of days after tickets went on sale and they were already gone!
As for music from other games/series, perhaps if this is a success they’ll consider it?