Thanks to a heads up by my friend Matt, I went to the Gamer Symphony Orchestra’s spring show this afternoon. They hit a lot of the staples (Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Halo) but notably had a pre-encore finale with a medley from Katamari Damacy which made me quite happy.
The show was free, as are their recordings. I may well do a song by song discussion when they put up MP3s or video for this concert. They’ve definitely got some talented people, but they’re also quite open about being a club that’s happy to take inexperienced people. As a result, I did definitely notice some slips, and I’m no pro. This didn’t prevent me from enjoying the concert and I would be willing to buy a CD (they weren’t available, presumably for licensing reasoning).
The arrangements they did were fairly original. For example, their Metal Gear medley had a jazzy version of the theme from three. I don’t think I’d pick that as my mainstay version, but it was a fun change of pace with the caveat that I’m not sure what a Bond audio reference was doing in there. Similarly, I’m rather fond of the way they played around with Still Alive (although that’s a version from a prior concert, possibly with a different lead).
On the whole I enjoyed it and will gladly catch future shows, particularly in UMCP’s lovely Clarisse Smith Art Center. If the presence of some less polished musicians is going to bother you, then probably not for you. These days you can get a show with fully professional orchestras, but I think their choices of music and arrangements benefit from intimate knowledge and enthusiasm for the material. Thus aside from being a terrific value, they also do pieces that I think tend not to be done even at the game orchestral concerts.
There was a relevance for Bond in MGS3. The "saving the game" conversations have to do with various films, with one for a James Bond movie being the most prevalent due to something that happens.
Posted by: Matt | May 10, 2009 at 01:24 PM