Akira Yamaoka Just Wants to PLAY!
The guys behind Dear Friends add the Silent Hill composer to their Chicago show.
Published: February 15, 2006
Video game music is a funky thing. On the one hand, it's maturing incredibly fast, gaining full symphonic orchestras and mixing in musical styles that would be considered far too geeky for the mainstream (seriously, can you imagine a J-Pop song in anything Disney if it weren't packaged with Kingdom Hearts?), but on the other, it's still a long ways before we'll have the kind of talent pool that TV and movies enjoy.
Okay, maybe not that long. The same minds behind the coordination of the Dear Friends shows with Final Fantasy composer Hironobu Sakaguchi are expanding things to world tour involving some of the biggest names in video game composition.
Most recently, the PLAY! A Video Game Symphony program picked up Akira Yamaoka, the incredibly talented composer of the Silent Hill series (and, as it happens, the Silent Hill movie directed by Brotherhood of the Wolf's Christophe Gans). Yamaoka will only play the tour's premiere in Chicago on March 27th where he'll attend the meet and greet with fellow composers Yuzo Koshiro, Jason Hayes, Jeremy Soule and Marty O'Donnell. The actual show will feature Yamaoka on guitar, performing a special arranged version of the "Theme of Laura" with live guitar accompaniment.
Given the kind of reception that Dear Friends managed to grab, but the general lack of initial interest that stuff like Video Games Live, it will be interesting to see how well the tour goes. We'll have more news as it pipes in.
Okay, maybe not that long. The same minds behind the coordination of the Dear Friends shows with Final Fantasy composer Hironobu Sakaguchi are expanding things to world tour involving some of the biggest names in video game composition.
Most recently, the PLAY! A Video Game Symphony program picked up Akira Yamaoka, the incredibly talented composer of the Silent Hill series (and, as it happens, the Silent Hill movie directed by Brotherhood of the Wolf's Christophe Gans). Yamaoka will only play the tour's premiere in Chicago on March 27th where he'll attend the meet and greet with fellow composers Yuzo Koshiro, Jason Hayes, Jeremy Soule and Marty O'Donnell. The actual show will feature Yamaoka on guitar, performing a special arranged version of the "Theme of Laura" with live guitar accompaniment.
Given the kind of reception that Dear Friends managed to grab, but the general lack of initial interest that stuff like Video Games Live, it will be interesting to see how well the tour goes. We'll have more news as it pipes in.
