Lapis Dream Orchestra is planning to perform every piece from FF VI in Kyoto on Oct 25, 2014. Here is a link to 2083.jp.

I went to one of their concerts in 2012 and it was great. The only "downside" is that they only performed a few songs with a full orchestra. The rest were different chamber ensemble set-ups, which I didn't mind at all since they did a great job.

New info: All pieces played by a full orchestra! I just got this info from one of the orchestra members. Anyone in Japan should definitely go, too bad I'm not there!

I wonder if they'll be borrowing arrangements from the Little Jack Orchestra's incredible FFVI concert.  Seeing how the orchestras are based in different cities and there's no "competition" between them per se it wouldn't surprise me.

Would love to be there!  Amazingu this has your name written all over it, no?

Hot damn, how do I go about getting tickets?

Oh dear lord DOES IT EVER.

I will do everything in my power to be there!
I can't find any info on when tickets will go on sale though...

I asked one of the players in the orchestra and she said they're not on sale yet. She said it's best to regulary check their website or twitter page:

http://www.lapisdream.org/
https://twitter.com/LapisDream

I wish they'll come back to Kyoto the next time I'll be/live there. The concert hall is beautiful and it's almost walking distance away from my parents-in-law. In fact, I think I'll buy tickets for them!

Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on their website regularly, but it's probably a good idea to follow them on Twitter as well.
Thanks for the heads-up!

SO want to go to this!

Did anybody wind up getting tickets for this?  Concert is in a few days.

The concert is completely free, so they're not actually selling tickets.
You'll just have to go and see if you can get a seat.

I'm going with a group of friends about 1 and a half our before the venue opens, so I think we should be fine.
Greatly looking forward to it!

That's great that they're not even charging for it, I just hope nobody gets turned away disappointed.  Be sure to give us an update after it's over!

Will do!

To be frank, I'm going in with low expectations.
For one thing, it's one of the best soundtracks ever so that's going to be hard to live up to,
and, well, I don't want to be mean, but it's an amateur orchestra...

You can check a sample of their work (Eternal Wind from FF3) on their website, which seems okay though.

http://www.lapisdream.org/

Dang, strongly considering going to this tomorrow...  My only fear is that I won't be able to get in after making the two-hour trip.

Edit:  Eh, what the hell, I'll try for it.  If I don't get in, I can at least bum around Arashiyama and take in the fall colors.  See you there, Amazingu!  Maybe.

I was just about to lambaste you for skipping out on FFVI + Kyoto before I saw your edit.   Hope you make it in! And if not, yeah, the fall colors there are beautiful!

Well, we made it, and there aren't 1800 people already in front of us in line, so I think we're in the clear!

Dude, I just totally StreetPassed with you, lol.

Now you can take a little piece of me with you wherever you go!

So, impressions!

I went with a couple of friends and we all came out with the same opinion: amazing show, despite obvious (and fairly numerous) slip-ups.
The fact that this was an amateur orchestra turned out to be pretty noticeable, as expected, but the overall performance was great and it was just, you know, a dream come true to hear the full FFVI soundtrack performed by an orchestra.

Here's a pic of the venue (sorry for the crappy iPhone quality):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0yWpAxCAAAGyoF.jpg

It was a pretty big venue (I'd actually been here before for a Dragon Quest IX concert) with around 1800 seats and most of the seats were filled.
From what I could tell, most people were gamers/actual fans of the game as well, and not just people who had dropped in for a free concert (although I'm sure there were a few of those as well), and it was just nice to know that so many people came together to listen to a 3-hour performance of a 20-year-old video game

Here's the "menu":
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0yWzEBCIAAd6P8.jpg

As you can see (if you bothered to count), only 59 of the 61 songs are on this play list.
The prelude was actually used for the encore (good choice, as it is the final song on the album ((despite it being a damn PRELUDE))), and there was a short pre-concert performance of Johnny C. Bad to introduce some of the main performers, which was quite nice.

I won't go into too much detail regarding each song, but here are some of my thoughts:

- The first two performances: Opening Theme (fortunately the venue had a massive pipe organ) + Tina, and Awakening + Colliery Nalsh were beautiful, but also slightly disappointing because of the harpist dropping way too many notes.
- ALL character themes were highlights of the show. Seriously ALL of them were really well done, with some of my top favorites being Kefka, Cayenne, Gogo (believe it or not), and best of all Shadow, which was a delightfully minimalist piece using only a handful of instruments.
- Mystic Forest + Mystery Train combo is an obvious combo I guess, but it worked and it was wonderful.
- Slam Shuffle was interesting because they used some kind of object to simulate the sound of rain (it looked like a cardboard tube filled with what sounded like sand or something granular in any case), which was a nice touch, but it got drowned out as soon as the instruments kicked in.
- The entire Opera scene (from "Overture" to "Grand Finale?") was... what you'd expect. Which is: absolutely wonderful, but still something I've already heard performed by an orchestra numerous times before. Also, the horns screwed up quite a few times, which was a running theme of the entire concert I'm afraid.
- Was really looking forward to Devil's Lab, which is one of my all-time favorite Uematsu songs (WHY do the Theatrhythm games keep ignoring this track!?), but it was underwhelming and disappointing. They did use some kind of tools to replicate those industrial clangs, but the arrangement felt too fast and chaotic. I guess this is just a hard piece to get right.
- The Catastrophe + New Continent + Fierce Battle combo was fantastic. Especially New Continent has always been one of my favorite tracks and the performance didn't disappoint. This was one of the highlights for me, together with:
- Rest in Peace + Dark World + The Day After. I was happy to hear they used a wind machine, pipe organ, and piano (the piano was actually surprisingly underused throughout the concert) for Dark World. It was absolutely beautiful and I could probably have listened to it for 2 hours straight.
- The last 3 performances were all fantastic. I was a bit worried about how they were going to do Fanatics, seeing as it's kind of an odd song to begin with, but it turned out quite well, and geez, Last Dungeon is just one of the best last dungeon themes ever, despite the unimaginative name.
- It goes without saying that Dancing Mad and the Ending Theme were crowd favorites.  Due to the rather large number of individual performances, there was never any applause between pieces (not even after the whole Opera set, which was kind of a shame), but Dancing Mad and the Ending Theme, being the lengthy beasts that they are, both got good rounds of applause. I'd heard an orchestral arrangement of Dancing Mad before, and it didn't veer too far from that arrangement so the impact wasn't that great (also, no chorus or voices/singers throughout the concert, which was very disappointing), but hearing the entire 20-minute ending theme performed by an orchestra is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

They actually took a tally of the top 10 most popular pieces among the 42 performers themselves, the results of which were displayed in the lobby (The number behind the song title is the number of votes):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0yXJDfCAAEohPA.jpg

For those who cannot read Japanese:
1. Searching Friends
2. Ending Theme
3. Dancing Mad
4. Decisive Battle
5. Terra's Theme
6. Fierce Battle
7. Save Them
7. Opening Theme
7. Aria Di Mezzo Carattere
10. Grand Finale?

They also had a board up where you could vote for your favorite characters from the game by placing a heart-shaped sticker on a piece of paper with their name/mug shot on them:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0yXi4ECcAAejEH.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0yX3bhCEAArpDN.jpg

I didn't snap a pic of the results, but Terra, Locke, Edgar, and Sabin were clearly dominating, with Edgar being the eventual winner if I remember correctly.
Strago and Umaro got very little love though, poor guys, as did Gogo (Kefka was not as popular as I would have expected either. I guess he's more popular in the West?). Banon got 1 vote, Ghastra got none. But Interceptor actually got a decent few, surprisingly, as did Ultros, unsurprisingly.

tl;dr version:
The FF6 concert was teh awsumz.

That was a fun read.  Makes me think back to the Little Jack Orchestra FFVI concert which was oh so awesome.

Just looking at the concert program you can tell they put some thought into how the arrangements were done.  Did they stick pretty close to the originals then?  I assume they added proper finales and what not.  That alone makes a big difference for me when listening to orchestral arrangements, to say nothing of the orchestra itself.

Once this redesign is out the door I'll have a few questions and comments.

The arrangements were straightforward and there was very little improv.
There were a couple of songs that had cool finales, but most of them were pretty simple.

I had no complaints though

Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything that Amazingu has already said.  Despite the amateur orchestra, I really enjoyed myself - definitely a one-in-a-lifetime experience.  Some of the stand-out pieces for me were Cayenne, Wild West, The Fierce Battle (so good), Gogo, Last Dungeon (again, so good), the first portion of Dancing Mad, and of course, the Ending Theme, which was 20+ minutes of awesome.  Totally worth the not-quite-3000 yen round trip and several hours of train-ing.