Once the applause had died down, we were treated to the voice of Solid Snake welcoming Tallarico back on the stage. Tallarico asked for two volunteers to compete in a game of classic Frogger for laptops and other nice prizes. He got a very enthusiastic response, unsurprisingly. No special motion-sensing for this one, just normal controls, but they had the full symphony playing the music in real time. It was a very cool event, all in all. Although the two volunteers were the worst Frogger players I've ever seen. Shameful, really, although I'll cut them some slack for being in front of thousands of people.
Next, we were treated to an absolutely stunning rendition of "Hikari", the main theme of Kingdom Hearts. This was probably my favorite part of the entire show; the music was incredible, and they combined it with footage from a variety of old Disney movies, which is bound to strike a nostalgic chord in anyone. I am not ashamed to say that I was genuinely moved. Due to Square Enix's stubbornness, no footage from the game was shown, but that was fine by me, since my attachment was to the Disney side of things. Presenting the movie footage was a stroke of genius on the part of Tallarico and the rest, and doubtless worked wonders on any lingering doubts the non-gamers may have had on gaming music.
I pity anything that had to follow Hikari, but the next piece acquitted itself well. We got a recording from Yuji Naka, before the show launched into a medley of tracks from Sonic the Hedgehog. It was a bit brass-heavy for my tastes, but worth hearing nonetheless. It brought back some fun memories, too.
I admit it: I'm almost as big of a Warcraft fanboy as I am a Zelda one, especially of the RTS incarnations. And Warcraft 3 has the greatest pre-rendered cutscenes of all time, which I occasionally open up and watch when I'm bored. A dubious honor amongst a crowd of Nintendo fans, but there you go. So when the next piece revealed itself to be a 5-minute, seamless medley of Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft music, with cinematics from the two games to match, I was just about the happiest guy in that theatre. It was a faithful rendition of the music; this was no creative arrangement, but that was fine with me, since Jason Hayes and his colleagues did a fantastic job with the originals. The choir they had with the symphony wasn't able to pull off some of the deeper-voiced stuff, which was not surprising in the least, but that was the only hiccup. I was nearly shaking at the end of it... a response that got more and more frequent as the concert progressed.
Once the applause had died down, Jack Wall introduced Martin Leung, "The Video Game Pianist." A few years back Leung released a video of himself playing the Super Mario Bros. theme really fast, and blindfolded to boot. I'm sure many of you have seen and remember it, but if not, you can find it at videogamepianist.com, under the videos part of the media section. It got roughly 40 million downloads and made him relatively famous in the online gaming community. I also ran into him at E3 this past summer, where he had a piano set up and was taking requests. He wasn't getting much attention there; most people preferred checking out unreleased games to chatting with the pianist. I talked to him for a few minutes, and he played the Dark World theme from A Link to the Past for me. He has since come up in the world, heh. After Jack Wall finished introducing him, he came out onto the stage and played a 7-minute piano solo featuring a variety of Final Fantasy songs. "To Zanarkand", "Eyes on Me", "Liberi Fatali", "One-Winged Angel", something I don't know the name of from Final Fantasy 6, and a number of other tracks got featured. Instead of game footage, they had the screen showing a close-up view of Leung and his playing. Martin isn't much of a showman, heh; he was quite stiff and obviously self-conscious, but as soon as he sat down to the piano that stiff figure melted down to the skilled player that he is. I wasn't exactly blown away by this particular medley, simply because a piano solo needs something really special to stand out after listening to a full orchestra, and Leung's signature speed was being saved for later.
We had a brief break from music for Tallarico to announce the winners of the Guitar Hero competition. He also commented on how many "red lights" he has seeing from video cameras in the audience. He didn't care, and said that he hoped to see them all on Youtube the next morning. Tallarico's big on the viral marketing strategy; he encourages people to record the show and put it all up on Youtube, and he often links directly to these videos in press releases on his site. Joe Kozachek ("jkoz"), a friend of mine who I convinced to go to VGL instead of the Play! Symphony in the same city, got the entire show on camera and threw it up on the 'net. You can probably find his videos and glowing comments pretty easily, but don't watch too much... the show really loses most of its appeal when you're viewing it through a low-quality digital camera screen.
Tallarico finally got around to introducing a medley from Advent Rising, which I had been expecting much earlier in the show. Advent Rising is almost universally hailed as Tallarico's best soundtrack, an opinion I wholeheartedly agree with. I really enjoyed this medley, especially since I had been listening to the soundtrack prior to meeting Tallarico. Most of the footage was of cutscenes from the game, and they looked pretty spoilerrific, too. That was unsurprising, since they needed to show some pretty dramatic stuff to accompany that music. Unfortunately, they made the mistake of playing some of the dialogue from the footage to give it a little bit of context. It was probably because few people in the audience had ever played the game, but I think they would have been better off without it. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful piece.
We got the true iconic, nostalgic powerhouse of game music next: Super Mario Bros. Koji Kondo's talking head popped up again to give us an introduction, and then they jumped into a brass-heavy, extremely fun arrangement of Mario music. The vast majority of the music was from Super Mario Bros. itself, but the footage went through most of the major Mario games and some of the spinoffs. I'm one of those many people who get smiles a mile wide every time he hears Mario music, so I loved this part of the show.
After that was over Martin Leung was ushered out onto the stage once again, where Tallarico talked about accusations that Leung's original video was faked. He ended with the announcement that they would prove it was real, blindfolded Leung, and set him on the piano. Thus began our Leung marathon. He started out playing numerous Mario themes at high speeds. The most impressive of these was that piano heavy level music from Super Mario World... I wish I knew its name. It plays in a lot of moving-platforms-in-the-air levels, like the one right before the second castle. And then he played the out-of-time fanfare and doubled his speed, which was unbelievable, at least to a piano illiterate like me. After he finished with Mario he went on to assorted Namco tunes, few of which I recognized, and then settled down for some sweet Tetris love. You've got to love the Tetris theme. He earned some laughs when he played the Mario out-of-time fanfare and doubled speed again.
I knew we were nearing the home stretch when Tallarico began talking about the world-famous pipe organ behind the stage. I had been wracking my brain trying to figure out what they would be playing that could possibly do it justice. I must say, I felt very stupid when Tallarico announced Castlevania — that should have been obvious. After some banter, he had Leung climb down into the organ, and we were treated to classic Castlevania played on one of the largest organs in the world. Do I really need to say any more? The word sublime comes to mind. I've always loved the sound of pipe organs, and it was incredibly cool hearing that huge one fill the theatre. I would have preferred to hear Ganon's theme, but I have to make concessions to the fact that not everyone is a Zelda fanatic, and this was a worthy substitute.
Once the cheering and clapping had died down and Martin Leung left the stage, Tallarico announced the final song of the concert: the Halo theme. Think what you will of the Halo games themselves, the Halo theme is an incredible piece of music, and I have loved it since the first game came out. They stuck very close to the original music; for the first five minutes, they played music and footage taken from Halo 1 and 2, with a very impressive light-show throughout the whole thing. The choir, which hadn't impressed me too much in earlier songs, really did this one justice. They finished that, let everything slow down as if they were finished... and then Tallarico came to the front of the stage with an electric guitar, the Halo 3 trailer started playing on the screen, and the symphony started up again. Some nice free advertising for Microsoft and a bit of a deviation from the purely symphonic music we'd had so far, but nobody in the audience cared — it was an incredible show. Goose-bump inducing. And Tallarico knows how to play his guitar. At the end of the day, this rivaled the Kingdom Hearts track as my favorite piece of music at the show.
But wait — that wasn't the end, as we all knew. There would of course be an encore. A regrettably scripted one that we all knew was coming, but it worked out well enough. Since we couldn't exactly hold up lighters in the traditional encore fashion, Tallarico asked everyone to get out their cell phones and handheld gaming systems, anything with a lit screen, and hold those up instead. It was a very cool touch that I've admired ever since he first started doing it, and I loved looking out over the crowd and seeing thousands of gamers holding up their SPs and DSs. The song they ended the concert on was "One Winged Angel" from Final Fantasy 7. It's a track that is widely regarded as a quintessential piece of video game symphony, and came as no surprise to anyone there. Like "Liberi Fatali", I've never much cared for it, but I can see how others might, especially those with nostalgia for the game. The choir came through again, doing a great job. Interestingly enough, Tallarico stayed on the stage and played electric guitar throughout the song. I'm not sure that that was the best decision he's ever made, but he was mostly drowned out by the orchestra so it really didn't matter.
And thus ended the best show I have ever seen. I've been to my fair share of concerts and plays, and everything in between, but none can even begin to compare to the fantastic experience that was Video Games Live. If you only visit one live performance in your lifetime, make it this one, because it is, to put it simply, a damn good show.
As soon as it was over people began to line up for the "Meet and Greet," where we could meet some of the composers and other big names who happened to be there. At this particular show we got to meet Ron Ragin, the lead singer in Baba Yetu; Tom Salta, who did the music for the Ghost Recon games; Lorne Lanning, the man behind Abe's Odyssey and other Oddworld games; and of course, Martin Leung, Jack Wall, and Tommy Tallarico himself. A pretty illustrious crowd, although it was small compared to some of the other shows they've put on. They had Miyamoto, Koji Kondo, and Alexey Pajitnov (the creator of Tetris) at their San Francisco show, for instance. I got the Jade Empire and Advent Rising soundtracks signed by Wall and Tallarico respectively, and my girlfriend and I got all of them to sign our backstage passes. I asked Tallarico if he'd be willing to get a picture with us, and at the last minute, Wall jumped in too. It certainly made me a happy camper. Moments like these are what make all these years of my gaming journalism hobby worth it.
The show is still gaining momentum, garnering ridiculous hype, awards, and praise from every direction. All of it deserved, I hasten to add. They're touring everywhere from Brazil, Mexico, and Korea to Washington, Los Angeles, and Montreal. I went to this New Haven show with my girlfriend; we'll go to both the Boston and Montreal shows as well, and I'll drag my family with me to one of them if I have to pay for their tickets myself. Tallarico, I salute you: your show has made yet another life-long fan, and I can't wait to see it again. And if any of you get a chance to do the same... You know what to do.
Next, we were treated to an absolutely stunning rendition of "Hikari", the main theme of Kingdom Hearts. This was probably my favorite part of the entire show; the music was incredible, and they combined it with footage from a variety of old Disney movies, which is bound to strike a nostalgic chord in anyone. I am not ashamed to say that I was genuinely moved. Due to Square Enix's stubbornness, no footage from the game was shown, but that was fine by me, since my attachment was to the Disney side of things. Presenting the movie footage was a stroke of genius on the part of Tallarico and the rest, and doubtless worked wonders on any lingering doubts the non-gamers may have had on gaming music.
I pity anything that had to follow Hikari, but the next piece acquitted itself well. We got a recording from Yuji Naka, before the show launched into a medley of tracks from Sonic the Hedgehog. It was a bit brass-heavy for my tastes, but worth hearing nonetheless. It brought back some fun memories, too.
I admit it: I'm almost as big of a Warcraft fanboy as I am a Zelda one, especially of the RTS incarnations. And Warcraft 3 has the greatest pre-rendered cutscenes of all time, which I occasionally open up and watch when I'm bored. A dubious honor amongst a crowd of Nintendo fans, but there you go. So when the next piece revealed itself to be a 5-minute, seamless medley of Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft music, with cinematics from the two games to match, I was just about the happiest guy in that theatre. It was a faithful rendition of the music; this was no creative arrangement, but that was fine with me, since Jason Hayes and his colleagues did a fantastic job with the originals. The choir they had with the symphony wasn't able to pull off some of the deeper-voiced stuff, which was not surprising in the least, but that was the only hiccup. I was nearly shaking at the end of it... a response that got more and more frequent as the concert progressed.
Once the applause had died down, Jack Wall introduced Martin Leung, "The Video Game Pianist." A few years back Leung released a video of himself playing the Super Mario Bros. theme really fast, and blindfolded to boot. I'm sure many of you have seen and remember it, but if not, you can find it at videogamepianist.com, under the videos part of the media section. It got roughly 40 million downloads and made him relatively famous in the online gaming community. I also ran into him at E3 this past summer, where he had a piano set up and was taking requests. He wasn't getting much attention there; most people preferred checking out unreleased games to chatting with the pianist. I talked to him for a few minutes, and he played the Dark World theme from A Link to the Past for me. He has since come up in the world, heh. After Jack Wall finished introducing him, he came out onto the stage and played a 7-minute piano solo featuring a variety of Final Fantasy songs. "To Zanarkand", "Eyes on Me", "Liberi Fatali", "One-Winged Angel", something I don't know the name of from Final Fantasy 6, and a number of other tracks got featured. Instead of game footage, they had the screen showing a close-up view of Leung and his playing. Martin isn't much of a showman, heh; he was quite stiff and obviously self-conscious, but as soon as he sat down to the piano that stiff figure melted down to the skilled player that he is. I wasn't exactly blown away by this particular medley, simply because a piano solo needs something really special to stand out after listening to a full orchestra, and Leung's signature speed was being saved for later.
We had a brief break from music for Tallarico to announce the winners of the Guitar Hero competition. He also commented on how many "red lights" he has seeing from video cameras in the audience. He didn't care, and said that he hoped to see them all on Youtube the next morning. Tallarico's big on the viral marketing strategy; he encourages people to record the show and put it all up on Youtube, and he often links directly to these videos in press releases on his site. Joe Kozachek ("jkoz"), a friend of mine who I convinced to go to VGL instead of the Play! Symphony in the same city, got the entire show on camera and threw it up on the 'net. You can probably find his videos and glowing comments pretty easily, but don't watch too much... the show really loses most of its appeal when you're viewing it through a low-quality digital camera screen.
Tallarico finally got around to introducing a medley from Advent Rising, which I had been expecting much earlier in the show. Advent Rising is almost universally hailed as Tallarico's best soundtrack, an opinion I wholeheartedly agree with. I really enjoyed this medley, especially since I had been listening to the soundtrack prior to meeting Tallarico. Most of the footage was of cutscenes from the game, and they looked pretty spoilerrific, too. That was unsurprising, since they needed to show some pretty dramatic stuff to accompany that music. Unfortunately, they made the mistake of playing some of the dialogue from the footage to give it a little bit of context. It was probably because few people in the audience had ever played the game, but I think they would have been better off without it. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful piece.
We got the true iconic, nostalgic powerhouse of game music next: Super Mario Bros. Koji Kondo's talking head popped up again to give us an introduction, and then they jumped into a brass-heavy, extremely fun arrangement of Mario music. The vast majority of the music was from Super Mario Bros. itself, but the footage went through most of the major Mario games and some of the spinoffs. I'm one of those many people who get smiles a mile wide every time he hears Mario music, so I loved this part of the show.
After that was over Martin Leung was ushered out onto the stage once again, where Tallarico talked about accusations that Leung's original video was faked. He ended with the announcement that they would prove it was real, blindfolded Leung, and set him on the piano. Thus began our Leung marathon. He started out playing numerous Mario themes at high speeds. The most impressive of these was that piano heavy level music from Super Mario World... I wish I knew its name. It plays in a lot of moving-platforms-in-the-air levels, like the one right before the second castle. And then he played the out-of-time fanfare and doubled his speed, which was unbelievable, at least to a piano illiterate like me. After he finished with Mario he went on to assorted Namco tunes, few of which I recognized, and then settled down for some sweet Tetris love. You've got to love the Tetris theme. He earned some laughs when he played the Mario out-of-time fanfare and doubled speed again.
I knew we were nearing the home stretch when Tallarico began talking about the world-famous pipe organ behind the stage. I had been wracking my brain trying to figure out what they would be playing that could possibly do it justice. I must say, I felt very stupid when Tallarico announced Castlevania — that should have been obvious. After some banter, he had Leung climb down into the organ, and we were treated to classic Castlevania played on one of the largest organs in the world. Do I really need to say any more? The word sublime comes to mind. I've always loved the sound of pipe organs, and it was incredibly cool hearing that huge one fill the theatre. I would have preferred to hear Ganon's theme, but I have to make concessions to the fact that not everyone is a Zelda fanatic, and this was a worthy substitute.
Once the cheering and clapping had died down and Martin Leung left the stage, Tallarico announced the final song of the concert: the Halo theme. Think what you will of the Halo games themselves, the Halo theme is an incredible piece of music, and I have loved it since the first game came out. They stuck very close to the original music; for the first five minutes, they played music and footage taken from Halo 1 and 2, with a very impressive light-show throughout the whole thing. The choir, which hadn't impressed me too much in earlier songs, really did this one justice. They finished that, let everything slow down as if they were finished... and then Tallarico came to the front of the stage with an electric guitar, the Halo 3 trailer started playing on the screen, and the symphony started up again. Some nice free advertising for Microsoft and a bit of a deviation from the purely symphonic music we'd had so far, but nobody in the audience cared — it was an incredible show. Goose-bump inducing. And Tallarico knows how to play his guitar. At the end of the day, this rivaled the Kingdom Hearts track as my favorite piece of music at the show.
But wait — that wasn't the end, as we all knew. There would of course be an encore. A regrettably scripted one that we all knew was coming, but it worked out well enough. Since we couldn't exactly hold up lighters in the traditional encore fashion, Tallarico asked everyone to get out their cell phones and handheld gaming systems, anything with a lit screen, and hold those up instead. It was a very cool touch that I've admired ever since he first started doing it, and I loved looking out over the crowd and seeing thousands of gamers holding up their SPs and DSs. The song they ended the concert on was "One Winged Angel" from Final Fantasy 7. It's a track that is widely regarded as a quintessential piece of video game symphony, and came as no surprise to anyone there. Like "Liberi Fatali", I've never much cared for it, but I can see how others might, especially those with nostalgia for the game. The choir came through again, doing a great job. Interestingly enough, Tallarico stayed on the stage and played electric guitar throughout the song. I'm not sure that that was the best decision he's ever made, but he was mostly drowned out by the orchestra so it really didn't matter.
And thus ended the best show I have ever seen. I've been to my fair share of concerts and plays, and everything in between, but none can even begin to compare to the fantastic experience that was Video Games Live. If you only visit one live performance in your lifetime, make it this one, because it is, to put it simply, a damn good show.
As soon as it was over people began to line up for the "Meet and Greet," where we could meet some of the composers and other big names who happened to be there. At this particular show we got to meet Ron Ragin, the lead singer in Baba Yetu; Tom Salta, who did the music for the Ghost Recon games; Lorne Lanning, the man behind Abe's Odyssey and other Oddworld games; and of course, Martin Leung, Jack Wall, and Tommy Tallarico himself. A pretty illustrious crowd, although it was small compared to some of the other shows they've put on. They had Miyamoto, Koji Kondo, and Alexey Pajitnov (the creator of Tetris) at their San Francisco show, for instance. I got the Jade Empire and Advent Rising soundtracks signed by Wall and Tallarico respectively, and my girlfriend and I got all of them to sign our backstage passes. I asked Tallarico if he'd be willing to get a picture with us, and at the last minute, Wall jumped in too. It certainly made me a happy camper. Moments like these are what make all these years of my gaming journalism hobby worth it.
The show is still gaining momentum, garnering ridiculous hype, awards, and praise from every direction. All of it deserved, I hasten to add. They're touring everywhere from Brazil, Mexico, and Korea to Washington, Los Angeles, and Montreal. I went to this New Haven show with my girlfriend; we'll go to both the Boston and Montreal shows as well, and I'll drag my family with me to one of them if I have to pay for their tickets myself. Tallarico, I salute you: your show has made yet another life-long fan, and I can't wait to see it again. And if any of you get a chance to do the same... You know what to do.