Distant Worlds: The Music of Final Fantsay Concert 2009
I'm still working on catching up with my concert and event reports, so, the next one chronologically from where I left off is my report of the Distant Worlds: The Music of Final Fantasy concert from December of 2009. I will be posting more reports soon!
Distant Worlds: A Final Fantasy Concert
Rosemont Theater, December 12, 2009
My dad dropped off my brother and I at the Allstate Arena (formerly known as the Rosemont Horizon) pretty close to the time the Distant Worlds concert was to begin. We went inside and saw a lot of little girls with their parents and heard Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” playing, only to discover that the concert we were going to was actually at the Rosemont Theater (a few minutes away) and that this was some sort of a Barbie Live show. Luckily, our dad hadn’t gone too far and so was able to turn around, pick us back up, and drop us off at the correct place before our concert began.
When we arrived at the Rosemont Theatre we saw that, as we had expected, some people were dressed up rather fancy (it was a classical music concert after all), some people were in cosplay as Final Fantasy characters (there were three Squall cosplayers in the section across from us, I don’t think that they knew each other either, which was pretty interesting), and then other people were somewhere in the business casual type dress.
Our seats were surprisingly close to the stage - second row! - on the far right of the theater. As had been advertised, the composer - Nobuo Uematsu was at the concert. We got to watch him walk in from a side entrance(which was really cool) and be seated on the main floor somewhere in the middle near the front.
The concert was a beautiful combination of live orchestral music and video clips from the games appropriate to the songs they played. Similar to Star Wars in concert, they had a large screen (the Star Wars in concert one was bigger, but so was the venue) on which they projected the video clips. A lot of the time they played clips from FMVs from the games, but one of my favorite uses of the screen was during “Swing de Chocobo” , they had a montage of chocobos from most, if not all, of the games in which chocobos have appeared - which included cleverly selected game play videos in which the chocobos appeared to be moving in time to the muic. While most of the pieces they played were instrumental, there were a few vocal tracks for which they had a vocalist join the orchestra. What was interesting about her is that she had a sound that would have gone really nicely with “Eyes on Me,” but that wasn’t one of the songs they played. There was also a choir that sang on some songs like “Liberali Fatali.”
I was happy to hear them play a lot of songs from my favorite game, Final Fantasy VIII, and it was kind of fun to look over at the trio of Squalls during some of those songs.
Our concert also included two world premier additions to the Distant Worlds set - “Dancing Mad” from Final Fantasy VI (my brother’s favorite game), and “J-E-N-O-V-A” from Final Fantasy VII. It was cool to get to be part of the audience that heard those songs in this arrangement for the very first time.
The complete set list was:
Prelude
Liberali Fatali from FFVIII
Victory Fanfare
To Zanarkand from FFX
Don’t Be Afraid from FFVIII (which had an awesome lead in clip)
Ronfaure from FFXI
Memoro de la Stono ~ Distant Worlds from FFXI
Love Grows from FFVIII
Swing de Chocobo
Melodies of Life from FFIX
Fisherman’s Horizon fromFFVIII
J-E-N-O-V-A from FFVII
-Intermission-
Opening ~ Bombing Mission from FFVII
Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII
Suteki da ne from FFX
Aries’ Theme from FFVII
Dancing Mad from FFVI
Kiss Me Good-Bye from FFXII
Theme of Love from FFIV
The Man with The Machine Gun from FFVIII
Final Fantasy XIV Preview (Twilight over Thanalan/Beneath Bloody Borders)
Terra’s Theme from FFVI
Encore - One Winged Angel from FFVII
One thing I disliked about the video screen was that having not played FFXII yet, the montage they played during “Kiss Me Good-Bye” seemed to be filled with spoilers. But then again, so did some of the other video clips, just those were different for me because those were from games that I have played or have seen played. Oh well.
So, at the encore Nobuo Uematsu came out on stage to play eletric keyboard - pretty much right in front of where we were seated! He and “The Chicago Mages” played a really cool Black Mages type sounding rendition of “One Winged Angel.” Prior to the song starting, the conductor Arnie Roth (who, by the way, would introduce most of the songs and say a little something about the game and such, though at the moment I don’t really remember what he said) had us rehearse our part of the song - the “Seph-i-roth” part. That was fun!
Unexpectedly, they gave us a second encore, also of “One Winged Angel”! I think that right before the second encore started, Nobuo Uematsu did a little “Victory Fanfare.” I’d say the audience was generally better with our part the second time around.
The concert was really special and lots of fun. I’m very glad that we went!
Distant Worlds: A Final Fantasy Concert
Rosemont Theater, December 12, 2009
My dad dropped off my brother and I at the Allstate Arena (formerly known as the Rosemont Horizon) pretty close to the time the Distant Worlds concert was to begin. We went inside and saw a lot of little girls with their parents and heard Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” playing, only to discover that the concert we were going to was actually at the Rosemont Theater (a few minutes away) and that this was some sort of a Barbie Live show. Luckily, our dad hadn’t gone too far and so was able to turn around, pick us back up, and drop us off at the correct place before our concert began.
When we arrived at the Rosemont Theatre we saw that, as we had expected, some people were dressed up rather fancy (it was a classical music concert after all), some people were in cosplay as Final Fantasy characters (there were three Squall cosplayers in the section across from us, I don’t think that they knew each other either, which was pretty interesting), and then other people were somewhere in the business casual type dress.
Our seats were surprisingly close to the stage - second row! - on the far right of the theater. As had been advertised, the composer - Nobuo Uematsu was at the concert. We got to watch him walk in from a side entrance(which was really cool) and be seated on the main floor somewhere in the middle near the front.
The concert was a beautiful combination of live orchestral music and video clips from the games appropriate to the songs they played. Similar to Star Wars in concert, they had a large screen (the Star Wars in concert one was bigger, but so was the venue) on which they projected the video clips. A lot of the time they played clips from FMVs from the games, but one of my favorite uses of the screen was during “Swing de Chocobo” , they had a montage of chocobos from most, if not all, of the games in which chocobos have appeared - which included cleverly selected game play videos in which the chocobos appeared to be moving in time to the muic. While most of the pieces they played were instrumental, there were a few vocal tracks for which they had a vocalist join the orchestra. What was interesting about her is that she had a sound that would have gone really nicely with “Eyes on Me,” but that wasn’t one of the songs they played. There was also a choir that sang on some songs like “Liberali Fatali.”
I was happy to hear them play a lot of songs from my favorite game, Final Fantasy VIII, and it was kind of fun to look over at the trio of Squalls during some of those songs.
Our concert also included two world premier additions to the Distant Worlds set - “Dancing Mad” from Final Fantasy VI (my brother’s favorite game), and “J-E-N-O-V-A” from Final Fantasy VII. It was cool to get to be part of the audience that heard those songs in this arrangement for the very first time.
The complete set list was:
Prelude
Liberali Fatali from FFVIII
Victory Fanfare
To Zanarkand from FFX
Don’t Be Afraid from FFVIII (which had an awesome lead in clip)
Ronfaure from FFXI
Memoro de la Stono ~ Distant Worlds from FFXI
Love Grows from FFVIII
Swing de Chocobo
Melodies of Life from FFIX
Fisherman’s Horizon fromFFVIII
J-E-N-O-V-A from FFVII
-Intermission-
Opening ~ Bombing Mission from FFVII
Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII
Suteki da ne from FFX
Aries’ Theme from FFVII
Dancing Mad from FFVI
Kiss Me Good-Bye from FFXII
Theme of Love from FFIV
The Man with The Machine Gun from FFVIII
Final Fantasy XIV Preview (Twilight over Thanalan/Beneath Bloody Borders)
Terra’s Theme from FFVI
Encore - One Winged Angel from FFVII
One thing I disliked about the video screen was that having not played FFXII yet, the montage they played during “Kiss Me Good-Bye” seemed to be filled with spoilers. But then again, so did some of the other video clips, just those were different for me because those were from games that I have played or have seen played. Oh well.
So, at the encore Nobuo Uematsu came out on stage to play eletric keyboard - pretty much right in front of where we were seated! He and “The Chicago Mages” played a really cool Black Mages type sounding rendition of “One Winged Angel.” Prior to the song starting, the conductor Arnie Roth (who, by the way, would introduce most of the songs and say a little something about the game and such, though at the moment I don’t really remember what he said) had us rehearse our part of the song - the “Seph-i-roth” part. That was fun!
Unexpectedly, they gave us a second encore, also of “One Winged Angel”! I think that right before the second encore started, Nobuo Uematsu did a little “Victory Fanfare.” I’d say the audience was generally better with our part the second time around.
The concert was really special and lots of fun. I’m very glad that we went!