A new game music concert for Japan has been announced by Famitsu.  It will be preformed by the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra on September 22.  Music from the following games/series will be performed:

Anubis
Metal Gear Solid
Ys
Mother (Earthbound) Medley
Monster Hunter
Popolocrois Story
Outrun
Romancing SaGa
Legend of Zelda
ICO
Namco Arcade Medley

Konji Kondo, Michiru Oshima, and Nobuo Uematsu will make appearances.

http://gamemusic.blog50.fc2.com/blog-entry-172.html
http://www.square-enix.co.jp/music/sem/ … atsu/news/

To add on to what Pete said, Shogo Sakai, Masahiro Sakurai and Kazushige Nojima will also make appearences.

Too bad I won't be in Japan at that time for it.

(Pete, please contact me on my MSN. I need to talk to you.)

Sounds like fun!
Will a CD be released for those of us who live in the States?  If so, will it be readily available, or will someone from Japan have to acquire for one of us?

cheers,

-avatar!

Anubis as in ZOE?

It looks like it says that you can order S tickets through this week's Famitsu, but which week are they referring to?  This coming week?  Anyone know what day Famitsu mags officially hit the stands?  I really want to go!!!

More info for those who are interested:

Title: PRESS START 2006 -SYMPHONY OF GAMES-

Date: September 22, 2006 (Doors open at 6:20pm and the event starts at 7:00pm)

Location: Bunkamura Orchard Hall

Guests: Nobuo Uematsu, Michiru Oshima, Koji Kondo, Shogo Sakai, Kazushige Nojima, Masahiro Sakurai and others (not yet announced).

Conductor: Taizo Takemoto

Orchestra: Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra

Tickets: S Seats - 7,875 Yen (Roughly $75); A Seats - 5,250 Yen (roughly $50); B Seats - 3,150 Yen (roughly $30) :: Early reservation starts in Famitsu magazines on July 14 :: Regular tickets commence sale at the end of August

What pieces would you all like to see performed for each series?

And why is Uematsu gonna be there?  Did he score any of those games?

Romancing SaGa is the only game series in which he has a minor relation to. I don't think that they'd be daring enough to play anything from the first SaGa games though. Expect some *thrilling* Ito material (Hamauzu IF lucky)...

Shit, Kondo's gonna be there!?  Is this dude making up for being sheltered within NCL's walls all these long years or what?  This makes two appearances in one year...

I still think Nintendo should give him his own orchestral Zelda concert.  Big Band Live was great, but it was more suited for the Mario pieces.

I could not agree more! A Zelda concert would be awesome.

Regarding "Press Start 2006": it sounds interesting. It is fun to see a video game music concert in the tradition of the "Orchestral Game Concerts" after 10 years (at least this is how it sounds to me at the moment).

Did it need producers outside of Japan to show them how great their composers are? Producers in the US, Europe and Australia? I think they understood how "weird" it must have looked when almost all the big Japanese names attended PLAY! Chicago. It would have been so much cheaper to produce the same concert in Japan, without all the insane travel expanses.

I hope the concert program is going to be a bit bigger (no Western games? Okay, no suprise...).

Looking forward to news on "Press Start 2006".

Wow, this looks nice, there's gonna be some live Ys this year afterall!!
with Outrun and Namco to round out the classics, it's a nice mix of New & Old...

JOE: if you can get a ticket to attend, I'll send Paypal to split your ticket cost, and send extra funds to pick up the program booklet and/or related merchandise for me, as a way of "attending" from afar.

You did a nice job summarizing the details of the voices concert, so this is your next assignment 

Also, is this event actually Produced by Enterbrain? (parent company which publishes Famitsu), or are they just being a Sponsor/Advertiser?  If they're running it, we *might* have just a slim chance for a disc....

I've got the order form from Famitsu - just need to mail it in.  Personally I don't think I'm the best reporter ever, but I'll do what I can (hrrm... hopefully I can get a ticket for this... it says if too many people apply they'll do a lottery)!  Also, I hope they actually PRINT ENOUGH PROGRAMS, since we got screwed out of them at the FF Voices concert.  >_<

Enterbrain is a special sponsor. Planning and production is being handled by Yomiuri Publishing and Company AZA (an artist management and production company). I hope that still leaves the chance for a recording being made...

If they do, I certainly hope it'll be a lot better than the arrangements in Hyrule Symphony.

One could interpret that in two ways, so I agree and a disagree.

As far as the actual arranging done by Ryuichi Katsumata, I thought it was very well done.  Even though it's not my favorite song on the album, "Goron City" is the most impressive from a musical arrangement standpoint - taking a mostly percussive song and arranging it for a string orchestra doesn't sound like it'd work on paper, but he actually pulled it off nicely.  Aside from him cutting out 1/3 of "Kakariko Village", which was totally beyond me, I had no problems with the arrangements.

But I do agree too, in the sense that the pieces could've been even better if a full symphony orchestra was used.  I was disappointed by the album at first when I learned that the pieces were arranged solely for string orchestra.  But it grew on me eventually.  I think the OGC's had terrible Zelda arrangements (except for the Zelda 4 ending theme).  "Hyrule Castle" sucked big time, and so did the Series Theme.  So drab and lifeless, and they slowed down the tempo, which killed the former for me.

Well, my main beef with it was that the pieces repeated the same music over and over and over again. SIX MINUTES of hearing the same thing -- it was just like looping! Now granted some of the Zelda pieces don't give much to work with, but I would've hoped that the bridges between the main portions would have been more unique. I suppose I'll give it another chance -- I remember stowing it after that first bitterly disappointing listening.

Yeah, the arrangements were pretty straight foward.  But being the Zelda fan that I am, I was just happy to hear some kind of official arrangement.  But you're right, there aren't any interludes.  Which is kinda ironic, because F-Zero X Guitar Arrange was choke full of 'em and that was arranged by Katsumata as well.

*shrugs*

Thanks .59 for that information. 
Nice to know that it's being run by experienced people, and I seem to recall seeing that Company AZA listed in the credits on some other past vgm event too...

If Joe can't get a ticket, I'm making an open offer for anyone else in Japan, that I'll help pay the costs for someone to attend this show on my behalf.

Personally with OGC I was always just annoyed that they added that Superman-sounding part to the Zelda theme.  What the heck was up with that?

And then started the viral wave of mislabelings on the P2P programs of John WILLIAMS (the composer of Superman) supposedly conducting that Zelda OGC piece.....which he didn't at all.

I've had to correct some of those people.
It's very....weird that I have to do that every so often.

It's weird to me that Famitsu/Enterbrain are doing magazine orders lately.
I never pick up Famitsu.

P2P programs were LOADED with misinformation like that. Everything from Vanessa Mae playing a Sailor Moon piece to Mozart composing Moonlight Sonata....

-Joshua

.

Correct me if I'm wrong but...these guys don't have much to do with the music, do they? Why make an appearance, exactly?

Shogo Sakai is an arranger/composer who has worked on a few Nintendo titles, but I honestly have no idea why Nojima (former-SE employee) and Sakurai will be there.

Allow me a brief rant, here...

So the other week I took several vacation days and had a nice long weekend, and visited a friend who recently moved to Chibi.  When I came back, I was greeted with a card from Famitsu saying that I got tickets for this concert and that I had to pay by postal money order by a certain date.

Problem: by the time I got home from my trip, that date had past.

So we called up the company and explained the situation and the response was essentially "too bad!"

So regular tickets went on sale today.  The website didn't give any indication of what *time* they would be available, so starting at midnight my friend and I kept checking the site (they updated it last night to have all the options for ordering, but wouldn't let orders go through).  I ended up setting my alarm for about every half hour all night and kept trying to send the order through, until finally it said it would start accepting orders at 10.

So!  Got up before 10, and continually tried entering the order for an entire hour, always getting "the server is full" and other error messages, and slowly watched every type of ticket dwindle to nothing.

Long story short: looks like I'm not going to the concert.  I'm really really angry and feel really really screwed here.  Are any of you other guys in Japan going, perchance?  Crystal, Adam, Xanadujin, etc?

On P2P networks, every guitar shredder is Joe Satriani, and every joke song is by Weird Al, no matter how raunchy or rude.

Don't give up yet.
If you really want to go,
Try the online auctions like YJ! and Rakuten
Or find ticket vendors in Akihabara that would carry these tickets.

Of course, be expected to pay more....
maybe your arm or leg.

No tickets showing up on Yahoo Japan auctions yet.  My last chances are that kind of thing or the "second chance" from eplus where they'll sell the tickets that haven't been paid for by people who ordered them after a certain date.

Hmm... ticket vendors in Akihabara... do you know of any?  I've never thought to look for anything like that there and wouldn't have even thought of it.  Might be willing to pay a lot to get in, depending on how much "a lot" is... 

Sorry, Joe I don't know any ticket vendors in Akihabara in particular.
But since Akihabara is the anime, game (and porn) capital of Tokyo, I'm assuming there should be some around.  these places are small, like hole in the wall type shops.

If you don't want to do the legwork, then just stick with the online stuff,etc.

Any word on exactly which pieces will be performed (for each game) yet?

@ Qui-Gon - Man, I'm sorry to hear that.  That really sucks.

A co-worker of mine had the same problem trying to get tix.  Had a friend who signed up to pre-order through Famitsu but didn't send the order off in time.  Then no luck getting through the phone lines on the sale date.

Getting tickets for concerts in general here is a pain in the arse.

Man, that has to be a REALLY small prefecture

So has your coworker informed you yet what a small world we live in? 

Anyway, she and I got tickets from Yahoo auctions and will be hitting the concert Friday and then heading to the show itself on Sunday - I think we'll be meeting up with Crystal too.  Drop me a keitai (or regular) mail and hopefully we can bump into you too!

It's SUNDAY?!
That's not what you told me earlier and that's important.

argh!  SATURDAY.  I'm an idiot and typed the wrong thing.  x_x  Saturday Saturday Saturday.