One of the disadvantages of living up in the New England area is that there are few opportunities to experience some really good shows. Particularly when it comes to the gaming and music scene. We have PAX East in the spring and some smaller shows like the Boston Festival of Indie games in the fall. But other than that, I usually need to travel to a bigger city like New York or all the way out to the west coast of the United States, where a majority of these gaming events happen. So the chance to attend a Distant Worlds concert in Boston was something that I was very excited about. Not only was this a concert of Final Fantasy music, but Nobuo Uematsu himself, the composer for most of the Final Fantasy games, would be there in person. For me, as a composer and a gamer, Uematsu represents the first wave of composers for the medium that helped make video game music more than just simple bleeps and bloops. He and many other composers of that generation showed that you could still write emotionally engaging and complex pieces of music even when faced with technological limitations. Having the chance to hear his work arranged for and performed by a full orchestra is something that, as someone who played these games back when they were new, continues to amaze me. So needless to say, I was thrilled to be able to attend this concert. Not only to hear some of my favorite video game music, but to see one of my favorite game composers appear and perform his own work. (more…)
