Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy is this saturday at the Rosemont theater... im thinking of going,, rosemont has been my fedex area since november. they still have 65$ main floor tickets and $35 balcony seats left.

ill make sure to bring my DS so i have something to do when they play liberi fatale or one winged angel AGAIN...  but im hoping they work in some new stuff

You mean like how they played One-Winged Angel twice at Play! a couple of years ago?

I WOULD attend if it was a new show with new material, but since it's 85% material that I've already paid for and seen before, it's unfortunately not worth it for me....

Seriously, there's thousands of FF tracks to choose from.  Asking for different songs doesn't seem unreasonable.    But Arnie seems confident this will still be a huge success, even as a carbon-copy show we've seen before.  I suppose he'll learn the hard way, as the tickets didn't sell out.

Not going to this one, already been to several of these and this one doesn't really have anything too special to warrant another 13 hour drive to Chicago.  Whoever goes though, take lots of pictures!

-Mike

I'm going!

It may not have sold out but it was certainly still pretty close.  The only seats open were the last 4 rows of the lower level, which is maybe 100 seats total.

It may also have been the same content, but there were some new songs which made it worth it.  They also did an encore of Terra's Theme, which made it worth it times a million.

Gotta support them whenever they come around.  It was their only US tour stop and I enjoyed it.  Hopefully more come (rehashed or not) or alternate games/sets from other inspired orchestras.  I wasn't really interested in Play!'s orchestrations of some of the American music (halo, wow meh).  If we could get a DQ concert over here I'd be super happy.

Even though I wasn't too excited about the premise of another FF concert, I certainly would have went to support the show if it was closer to the Boston area. I'm glad it was a good show, though... that encore of Tina/Terra's theme must have been awesome.

Yes, that's my point, why rehash FF when there's MANY game series (such as DQ and others) which would benefit from some live showings.

I went to the Chicago show the other night and since I hadn't actually gone to any VGM concerts before then, I thought it was pretty great. However, I absolutely agree with the criticism that there's not enough new material in the lineup. I did enjoy all of it, but it was kind of disappointing listening to the EXACT SAME arrangements of FFVIII's songs that have existed since FLWV came out almost a decade ago. However, the lead-up to Don't Be Afraid scored big points for hilarity, as did several of the big-screen presentations. The parts I liked most were the ones where I was actually hearing new stuff, like the old guy noodling around in Vamo' Alla Flamenco (incidentally, I was sitting about eight feet from him, which was awesome), and the fantastic encore of Terra's Theme.

Since then, I've been trying to figure out how I would improve a Final Fantasy concert, since it's getting a little bit stale and is just about the only one with enough popular/nerd appeal crossover to draw crowds in any number. Yes, there's Play and Video Games Live and all the other shows, but Final Fantasy, I think, will always be the core appeal for the uninitiated video game music fan. Most of the people at the show didn't seem to be too knowledgeable about the whole game music scene, even the ones in the meet 'n' greet line, so it made me wonder why places like CDJapan or Play-Asia wouldn't want to advertise there.

Anyway, I would first change the Final Fantasy concerts by opening up the available track selection from just Uematsu's compositions to the entirety of the series, including MQ, the Ivalice games, CC, Compilation of VII, etc. Second, I'd bring in electric guitars, bass, synthesizers... basically Black Mages, I suppose. Third, more battle music in general. I should really iron out a tracklist for my ideal Final Fantasy concert, although that's probably fodder for a different thread. I still want my Namco-brand Ace Combat/Soul Calibur/Tekken concert, too.

Oh well. I got my FFVI OST and Celtic Moon signed by Uematsu, and that makes me happy.

I'm glad the concert was good, and that's an excellent encore piece. Surprised they're not doing FFIV Theme of Love though, since the DS remake just came out in Japan and is coming here soon.

I agree, DQ would be good, and SO EASY to do since all the music's been fully arranged for orchestra. All they need is the rights, and since they're already good with S-E, why not? Maybe Sugiyama is holding back the rights?

I'd also like to see them do performances of the music Shimomura arranged for drammatica. I'd bet that this will come about in the near future.

Actually, they did. They used a montage of what must have been all the CG from the DS version along with a bit of gameplay footage on the big screens behind the orchestra. And the arrangement itself was nice, too.

Any particular reason you didn't attend FF Dear Friends or the other 2 shows in chicago, but decided to see this as your first time?

Because when those other shows were playing, I was living in Washington State and poor. Now I'm living in Michigan and poor, but this time there wasn't any need to buy a plane ticket. I would have preferred to see Play, but I just couldn't swing the plane fare and hotel costs at the time. As my luck would have it, I just checked the Play website and they were playing in Seattle a month ago which I totally would have gone to, but now I'm in Michigan. Crap.