There are 2 concerts this time.

one is 9/22/ in Osaka.
This should make you Osaka-based (Xanadujin and Amazingu) guys happy!

The other is 9/17 in Pacifico Yokohama

A full playlist has not been released yet.

According to 6/22's Famitsu, they will play Actraiser, Shadow of the Collossus, Castlevania, and maybe Chrono Trigger.

The Usual guests: Uematsu (FF), Sakai (mother), Sakurai (Kirby), Nojima (Metal Gear), and the conductor are coming.
There's a Opera singer coming.

Reservations start now through e+(http://eplus.jp)  until July 8.

http://www.famitsu.com/game/news/2007/0 … 4,0,0.html

Wow, thanks, I'm actually moving to the Osaka area late next month!  This is great timing.

The booking page clearly says Jeremy Soule too will be featured in Yokohama, yet Famitsu completely ignores him. It's not surprising though, considering how many audiences would know him...

Final Fantasy, not Metal Gear

It would be good for us if they decide to record it (CD or DVD) this time...

Hopefully you'll be attending again, like last year? 

Yes Carl, I am interested in going.
I'll find out next month. 

Oops..Final Fantasy....

I should probably be grateful that I got to go to one of these, rather than disappointed I'll be back in the states when this one happens.  :\

I just knew it and was so surprized enough to bump this thread...

Yokohama concert will have Keiki Kobayashi (God), Yuzo Koshiro and Jeremy Soul as well as Uematsu, Sakurai, blah blah blah. And the setlist of both concerts covers ACE COMBAT ZERO <3 ACE COMBAT Chous team will premiere on september 17th <3 <3 <3 (...although they are just students of a music college).

http://eplus.jp/sys/web/ps07/index02.html

Holy f---. AC Zero?! Finally, get some nice fresh material in there instead of the "typical" VGM concert fare.

I'm in for the Yokohama show!  Pretty excited!

Show is coming up here in a few days. 

For the record, I checked with Artistry Entertainment, and Jeremy Soule will not be attending the concert.  Music from Oblivion will be performed, however.  Enjoy the show!

Well, maybe he finally noticed almost no audience would know his name ;p (although Oblivion has been hyped so much that even I start playing it... ).

As expected, the AC6 official website says "ZERO" from AC ZERO is going to be performed. I'm curious to know if the AC chorus team is responsible for it, since they were rumored to be composed of students from a music college and its singing acutally sounds a tad amateurish to me... (especially "Megalith Agnus Dei" and "The Unsung War"), although I'm not an expert on this matter, and probably it's not uncommon to hire students chorus in concerts?

See More Friends: Music from Final Fantasy.  California State University Fullerton Choir.  I was going to school there at the time, so it was awesome to see Dear Friends posters up all over the school.  I even stole TWO of them! 

Anyone else going to these concerts?

It was on today. I went. It was good fun. The best part was when OWA played as an encore. Man, who could have predicted it?!

In all seriousness, the event was decent. The arrangements were fresh, but aside from Takemoto (the conductor) the whole show lacked energy. The standout acts were the non-orchestral themes. Only 14 tracks were played in total, but none of them were that long in length. The special guests did nothing other than appear on stage and say a few words.

Some surprise additions were Sakura Taisen and a decent Soule medely that Uematsu added in cause he liked it from the Chicago Play! show.

In short, a good show, but wasn't worth the 80$ to see.

Back from the concert today so thought I'd post impressions.  People attending the Osaka concert may want to skip this post until after you see the show.

The set list is as Cedille listed, with a couple additions I will get to.  I don't know if "shmup" is common gamespeak but for clarification the fourth performance of the first half was a shooting medley   I should mention that some of the segments from this, along with the Actraiser, Chrono Trigger, Mario, Castlevania, Sakura Wars, and the encore pieces were the only ones with which I was familiar with the original material.

My first impression from the performance - unfortunately a negative one - was that the sound quality and acoustics were just bad.  I guess the obvious use of speakers and amplification was necessary due to the quite large size of the venue, but the implementation left much to be desired.  The sound seemed to be coming in a straight line from the stage and was muddled and with too much bass, to the point that it sounded more like listening to a mediocre sound system than a live orchestra.  It could have been Britney up there pretending to play a violin and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  Perhaps they tweaked the mixer settings in the second half as it wasn't as noticeable then but it was disappointing not to get the full sensation of listening to a live orchestra after going through a considerable bit of effort to see the show.

The performance itself was fairly quality.  The choir performed in about a third of the pieces and did a much better job than the choir in the 20020220 concert, almost to the point of drowning out parts of the orchestra at times actually (another mixing issue perhaps).  There were no glaring mistakes on the orchestra's part nor were there any particularly virtuoso performances, although I'm no expert on the matter.  The brass section could have used a boost as it often sounded underpowered.  A couple of opera singers joined the fray at times and while I wonder if their presence was really necessary they performed their parts fine.

Unfortunately the arrangements leaved something to be desired.  In particular I would have liked to see some more creative use of segues or more segues in general, as most often the orchestra would simply fade out or stop abruptly with one theme before moving on to the next.  Fortunately several of the pieces in the latter half of the program remedied this problem.

There weren't any real standouts from the first half of the program to me.  The Actraiser performance was nice but not so revolutionary after hearing the Symphonic Suite album.  The shooting medley had some catchy parts and the appearance of one Starfox theme was a pleasant surprise, but more cohesion between the 17 (!) different themes included would have been nice.  The Wanda and the Colossus piece was the most cinematic of the bunch, as was the video accompaniment from the game which was quite exciting and matched the music well.

I had high expectations for the second half with Chrono Trigger and Castlevania featured but was unfortunately disappointed.  Sega Sound Unit's performance was more (bad) style over substance although it was a good chuckle seeing the vocalist try to fire up the crowd.  The Chrono Trigger piece simply moved from a repetitive arrangement of the opening theme onto "Crono and Marle" then back to the main theme.  This has been done before, and with so much better material available for use from CT this was a real disappointment.  The Mario arrangement on the other hand was just a complete joke.  They covered the main theme, repeated it, and just when it seemed like they were about to segue into something else with the star power-up music... that's it, over.  I'd be surprised if the whole thing lasted over two minutes.  Thankfully the Castlevania arrangement didn't disappoint.  They included a few classic themes from the NES Castlevanias and actually segued properly from one theme to the next.  There is so much more good stuff they could use from the series but at least this piece brought a smile to my face for the first time for the evening.

Even with the Sakura Wars and Kingdom Hearts performances the second half was awfully brief and as the hosts left the stage I found the words "Waste of money and maybe even time" echoing through my head.

The rest of the audience and I gave excessive applause hoping for salvation in the form of an encore and back strutted the conductor to try for it.  There was no spoken intro for the piece but after the first few seconds of play you realized none was needed because it's Zelda baby.  Main theme - check.  Hyrule Castle theme - check.  Ocarina overworld theme - check.  They moved from one classic Zelda theme to the next and it was all class.  This is the way the concert should have been from the start.  After that Nobuo and the Black Mages joined the orchestra and choir on stage for, of course, One Winged Angel.  As tired as I would normally be of hearing this song after numerous live and album renditions, the combination of rock band plus orchestra plus FF7 and Advent Children cinematics made for a quality end to the show.

With the two encore pieces I left the show satisfied but I don't think they should be relying on encores to carry the show.  Here's hoping that if they truly desire to make these concerts a regular event (as the hosts mentioned a number of times) they will put the proper effort into preparation.  I am fine with the fact that not everybody is going to have all their favorite material played at these concerts, but if they're going to be playing in the same region to at least partially the same audience year after year, they better either make the performance of high enough quality to warrant multiple viewings (which wasn't the case here, especially when marred by the bad sound system and acoustics) or quit rehashing arrangements and give the fans more original material.

QFT, but I personally think 14 (+2) tracks are enough, since it'd be hard to maintain our focus on more than 20 tracks, especially when performances aren't so good.

I don't have much to say about my experience but there are a few to mention.

As for ACE COMBAT ZERO, it was a tad disappointing. The performance was good overall and Oriko Takahashi's soprano was amazing but I paid 80$ just for this. It’s phenomenal how its flamenco guitars ended up being background noise. It was totally deprived of the contrast between the quasi-flamenco and the chorus part the original track has. In the middle section of the original form, guitar players did their rasgueado-ish passages or simple chord strokes with castanets and handclaps, but what I heard yesterday is just the orchestra who played strings attacks and percussions which disturbed quasi-flamenco part. What’s worse, the 28 piece chorus was pretty weak and delicate.

The worst entry was Chisa Yokoyama's performance. She was the host of the concert, which I think is why she could take our 5 minutes into her hands. I like some of Sakura Wars music, but "Geki Teikoku Kagekidan" was rather out of the place.

Another track that left me a bad impression was Oblivion. The track wasn't terrible, per se. They selected the only track that had a melody and it sounded like Pirates of the Caribbean. The unpleasing moment came when Uematsu read the letter where Soule explained why he couldn't come. That briefly says "Hi, all! Due to a Hollywood movie offer I don’t attend your concert! Btw, Steven Spielberg says 50％ of the impression we get from a film is from its music and I agree with him!". I’m still not sure why he quoted Spilberg’s saying but while playing Oblivion I’m always amazed how literally nonexistent its music is.

The possibility of a next concert is somewhat gloomy, given how organizers implied the attendance was dissatisfying during the concert (and reportedly upstairs seats were often empty).

I take it you don't recall which pieces were included in the Oblivion suite?  I wonder if it was the same arrangement that was at PLAY!, which includes the main title and Watchman's Ease.  I really liked the PLAY! arrangement, but then again, I really enjoyed the music in-game.

There was music in Oblivion? In Soule's defense, the game is so bloody long and he wrote so little music for it that anything with more emphasis would have been distracting. I ended up replacing all his music with appropriate film material (mostly John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. There's nothing quite like going into battle with music from "Total Recall.")

I'll yield that his battle music is somewhat bland and uninspired, but I love the exploration themes.  Watchman's Ease plays in towns, and Auriel's Ascension (my favorite track) always seems to play after grave events in the game, and is so fitting.  I wish they'd include it in their performances.

Yeah, I remember liking the town music quite a bit... and there's this really gorgeous exploration theme with a flute solo accompanied by harp that I love. I just wish he had written more stuff for the game.

Just curious, can any of you identify the Colossus piece?

(because if it was Revived Power then I have to hunt down and kill you)

Just wanted to let you all know....

Yes, there were cameras. I saw only 2: One in the middle and one in the back.
Lots of mics all around so maybe, POSSIBLY there could be a CD and DVD release.

I had to surrender my "camera" to security until the end of the show; I was not exactly happy about having my bag checked.

No autograph signings this year.  I guess last year was a spur of the moment thing.....

And Adam,
that Zelda medley did NOT have Hyrule Castle.
You probably were mistaking it for the Dark overworld theme from Zelda LTTP??
b/c this was the same medley from last year..... 

It's a tough question, since I don't own the soundtrack, and as my previous post implies, most of Oblivion music sounds too airy to remember (I'm not badmouthing Soule, as I heard Oblivion is one of his weaker works and given what people generally hate him, he could be my taste ). I however say the title theme was there for certain (it sounds like Pirates of the Caribbean pretty much). Also, as far as I checked Toronto 2006, I think the arrangement was definitely different from the Play! (Press Start version didn't have chorus at all, IIRC). Soule was credited as the composer/arranger for the suite anyway.

The latter was Revived Power for certain and I hear the former was Grotesque Figures.

I'd say the Mario piece made a viable run for worst entry but yeah, Chisa or whoever's little dance routine for Sakura Wars was pretty awful.  Really wish they would get rid of the voice actor hosts for these concerts in general; they get on my nerves.

If you're referring to Uematsu and the other hosts, they kept going on about how great it was that so many people came and filled up such a large venue.  I didn't see the balcony so can't vouch for the authenticity of their statements.

Oops, so I did ^_^;

It figures.

Thanks a lot for your impressions!
I was wondering if they sold any merchandise such as concert programs, and how these turned out?

Programs were free. 

They had all kinds of merchandise.

They had Nintendo plushies: Mario Luigi, Bowser, Princess, and a Zelda Phantom Hourglass DS lite case.

Also they had
Hyper Game music live cds, Yuzo Koshiro cds, The Opera singer's 10 cds, VOICES DVD, Hudson, Outrun BOx set, Sega,etc.
Basically it was stuff that's already on sale.

The t-shirt makers "King Of Games" was there too.
I saw their Metroid t-shirt. Price was like 6000 yen.  I think their Zelda SP 20th Anniv was a much better design, but they didn't bring any of those.

I just came back from the Osaka show yesterday, and I thought it was pretty good.
Could've been better, but it wasn't bad in any way at all.

Adam has already written his extensive review so I don't have much to add except:

- I was rather disappointed with SotC. I was looking forward to this most, and it ended up being one of the most disappointing. The track choice was decent, but I already had a bad feeling when I saw the chorus LEAVING before this performance came up, so I knew none of my favorite themes were going to be there. And it just didn't sound as good as the original game version, I'm sorry to say.

- The Shmup medley was rather cool, I hardly recognized anything, not being a great shmup fan myself, but it was good music, and the Starfox stuff was awesome, obviously.

- The VIPs were rather cool. I'd never seen Uematsu in real life before, so that was cool, and he definitely stole the show, cos the woman was just annoying. Also, in the second half, a guest appearance by Koji Kondo (how awesome is it to get to see Kondo interviewed by Uematsu!?), and a surprise appearance by Yoko Shimomura, which was very nice. She's far from the Japanese Idol image, so she was actually fun to listen to.

- The second half MORE than made up for what was only an okay first half as far as I'm concerned.
Although it started wirh GHM Sound Team, which was, well, noisy and not much else, it then kicked into Chrono Trigger, which was totally awesome. I mean, I know it's pretty much exactly the same arrangement as the Orchestral Game Concert, but just hearing a live performance of the main theme of a game that had such a profound impact on my childhood was unbelievable. I loved it.

- Then on to what would turn out to be one of the highlights of the show for me: Oblivion.
Seriously, I don't know what all you people are bitching about, YES, Oblivion had music, and YES, it was pretty damn good. They picked the right tracks and wove them together magnificently. I'm mostly oriented towards Japanese VGM too, but damn, Jeremy Soul did a great job here. Gave me goose-bumps. The GOOD ones.

- Another VGM concert, another Mario arrangement. I actually liked this one, because they made it sound like a chiptune at places. Decent enough.

- Castlevania, as expected, kicked all kinds of ass. Yes, it's lots of familiar tunes we've heard over and over again, but they're SO DAMN GOOD. Rondo of Blood was especially cool. Another Highlight.

- Kingdom Hearts was fantastic! It went from the main theme (Hikari/Simple and Clean) to Destati (again another conspicuous absence of the chorus here, which was rather disappointing), then into Dearly Beloved (still beautiful) to pass through Traverse Town (Saxophone and all, how frigging COOL is THAT!?) and end up with the closing line of the credits if I'm not mistaken. Another Hit this one.

- We got the same encores obviously, with the only major difference being that the Black Mages did not attend Osaka, so we got the Advent Children version of OWA WITHOUT the guitars. Shame that.
And of course the Zelda Medley ruled. Man, the Dark World theme is the best thing EVAR!

I was amazed at the rather low turn-up though. I was sitting with Xanadujin on the third floor and it was practically empty, and from what we could see the second floor didn't have a lot of people on it either. The first floor looked crowded enough, but wasn't sold out either, it seemed. Still, Uematsu seemed happy, and it sounded very much like he wanted to do another concert again next year.

I hope they do.

We got very little in terms of merchandise though. Didn't see any soundtrack CD's.
Those T-shirt Makers were there though, and they have some really nice T-shirts, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna pay 6000 yen for them.

There was no recording material from what I could see, but if they already recorded stuff in Tokyo, I guess they wouldn't have to do it again. I hope this gets a proper CD release though.

Definitely going again next year!

Good old Jeremy...Always good for a laugh.

Remember: Steven Spielburg played ET on the Atari 2600 and wondered why it couldn't be more like Pac Man...So maybe he knows more than everyone else does?

Does anyone have any idea who the "PRESS START GADGET ORCHESTRA" and the "PRESS START 2007 CHOIR" are?  Were they made up of professional players?  University players?  Anyone know?

Here's a 2-disc sized audio recording of the concert, at the Yokohama location.

[202 MB] in size
www.sendspace.com/file/v4niux
PRESS START 2007 ~Symphony of Games~ in YOKOHAMA.rar

So far Famitsu hasn't announced their Official Version of either a CD or DVD, but if they do I'll be sure to pick it up, because as you'll hear from the music this year's performance was more polished than last year's.

Love that Shooter Medley!!
the new Castlevania Medley was pretty killer too.

And hearing Nobuo singing "Daytoooona" in the MC section was pretty funny, right after the real song was done.

n/a

http://fami-web.jp/pressstart/about.html

My statement might have been right as the venue gets smaller this time.

Any concertgoer here?

It was on my list of stuff to do in June but I completely spaced.

Which is a great move, in my opinion. So much better for good sound (which was obviously lacking last year).

Yes! I am considering to go. I have been to a Japanese game music concert for "Tour de Japon" last time, and I am pretty excited.

To clarify, Sakurai also states the sound quality was the major concern among them, so they bring the venue back to the one they used in 2006. I suspect last year's attendance also affected this decision, but it's just my baseless guess.

I just hope the tracklist won't be merely focused on those participating in SSBB. 

Btw, maybe I should have started a new thread for it. Adam, if possible, could you split this?