Tonight I witnessed what I hope will be considered a pivotal night in the annals of orchestral music and video game history.

Tonight marked the beginning of the U.S. tour (in Chicago, IL) for Nobuo Uematsu's Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy concert series.

The funny thing is that I'm what you could consider a "casual" Final Fantasy fan. I don't play them; I watch them being played by other people, namely my wife. I had purchased the concert tickets as a surprise Christmas gift, after she had been raving about how amazing it must have been to be at the original concert in May of 2004 in Los Angeles, before they had the idea to make it a tour. But make no mistake, the Final Fantasy series and Uematsu's music has affected me the same it has for anyone who's witnessed the phenomenon first-hand with the controller.

At first I thought that too many people were underdressed for a concert performance. Some were even overdressed. There were people in what would be considered "black tie" attire, and others in jeans and t-shirts. I would later come to learn when Uematsu took the stage and quizzed the audience that people had driven not only from greater Chicagoland, but the majority (or at least the loudest) of the audience came from out of state. Some as far away as New York, and on the drive out of the parking lot I was behind a car with Ontario plates. A few people even hollered when Uematsu asked if there was anyone in the audience who had come from overseas.

It's safe to say that this man's music has a power to draw people together. Dads had driven their children to see this show, girlfriends brought their boyfriends, other friends just all piled into a car and road-tripped to see what is one of the first video-game only music concerts in the United States.

A game did this. A series of games, anyway. Hell, the music from a series of games.

And because it came from a game, the concert took on a new and interesting angle. Not only was the symphony bathed in stage lighting and smoke and light effects, but there were three giant projection and two smaller plasma screens that would show footage from the cinemas of the games whenever possible. The editing of the footage from Final Fantasy VIII's Love Grows when it was played was especially moving. I hadn't even seen the game played through entirely and I was getting a bit choked up, as were many of the other guys people in the audience.

But the first highlight of the concert (not including the encore) was the medley from Final Fantasy 1-3, when it started off with the classic harp climbing and cascading back down the scale that has been repeated in the main menu of every FF game since the very first.

At times, the audience would cheer and whoop over the orchestra, because they couldn't contain themselves anymore. It was just that powerful.

Someone behind us in the concession line during the intermission said, "This is different. Everyone here at this show, every last person, is here because they love this music, this game. No one got dragged here by a significant other, or is thinking 'yeah, concert music is okay.' They're here because they want to be." And she couldn't have been more right. Sure, the Dads got dragged here by their kids, but what parent is going to deny their child when they beg their parents to take them to a symphonic concert? "It's about videogame music, you say?"

It's actually about the future of videogames, Dad, and even more importantly, the future of pop-culture. Sure, you're rolling your eyes at that previous line, because you've heard it all before, right? But think about this for a second: Name four other influential classical composers from the 20th century. I'd include the 21st but chances are they were also influential in the 20th as we're only five years in.

Here are my picks, from most influential and recent to least (of my top four): John Williams, Danny Elfman, George and Ira Gershwin (I'm considering them the same entity for purposes of this argument), and Cole Porter. Porter and Gershwin are similar to Elfman and Williams, in that they capture an "era" of entertainment. Their music defines the early decades of America, be it a concert hall, or used in movies, or just played on a record player in homes. Williams and Elfman define the latter half of the century, their pieces and themes finding their way from movies (and animated TV in Elfman's case) into our heads (Williams more than Elfman, typically, as Elfman's melodies aren't as simple or catchy).

There's a pattern here. The pop-culture classical music wave starts with concerts and theater in the days before radio, and moves on into the television and movie arenas.

But now here comes Uematsu, a video game composer, with his own symphonic concert tour. We're not supposed to take video-games seriously, right? I mean, at least not the population at large. And yet, there we were, all 4,400 of us at the Rosemont Theater, the young and the old, the casual and the hardcore, the Transformers t-shirt wearers and the cosplayers, there to hear his music played for us by the Chicago Pops. We cheered and cried as we heard the 8 and 16 bit themes we'd heard a thousand times finally played the way they sounded to us when we closed our eyes. This is the future of concert music. You could feel the electricity of it in the air.

The musicians knew it, too. You could see the surprise on their faces. The lead violinist was actually holding his face with his free hand, trying to keep his jaw from hitting the floor presumably, smiling and laughing in pure shock during the part where Uematsu took the stage and asked the audience questions, because he most probably had never heard a sold-out theater make so much noise before. The conductor, the entire band, were truly floored by the fan appreciation. I have no doubt that they've never seen that level of a standing ovation previous to tonight's. It was humbling, to say the least.

So do yourselves a favor: if you live anywhere near San Francisco, find a way to witness history in the making, because history is coming your way March 7th (if it's not sold out, that is). Granted, after companies see the success of this concert series, we can hope to see more (Nintendo, do you hear us? We want a Legend of Zelda concert tour) in the future, but this is your chance to get in on the ground floor, and to give back to Uematsu for giving us such a wealth of amazing memories these past eighteen years.

Posted by bowler at February 20, 2005 08:57 AM | TrackBack