Video game music is totally a thing. If you haven’t seen it performed live before, you have to get on it ASAP. Let’s learn more about Distant Worlds: Melbourne!
What is Distant Worlds?
Distant Worlds has actually been around for a number of years now (over a decade). The concert series focuses entirely on Final Fantasy music.
According to the press release we received, the concert series first began in 2007 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the original Final Fantasy game.
Distant Worlds has been to Australia before in 2017 when it hosted its concert at the ICC Theatre in Sydney.
What should we expect at the Melbourne concert?
The concert will be headed by conductor Arnie Roth and the ‘Distant World Philharmonic and Chorus’. Think like a classical music concert except they’re gonna play amazing music from Final Fantasy.
For the video game music fans, that includes music by Nobuo Uematsu-sensei and Yoko Shimomura-sensei. The former famous for several Final Fantasy scores and the latter famous for all of the Kingdom Hearts games (another Squenix title).
I’ve never been to a concert like this before, why should I care?
Alright, this is where I do like my mini-rant on video game music and why I love it so much and why you should too.
I spent high school and uni learning and playing the piano (plus exams and uni-level music </nerd alert>). One of my favourite things to play in between exam material was just straight up video game and anime music (incl. Miyazaki film scores by Joe Hisaishi-sensei). I was particularly obsessed with Final Fantasy boss battle themes on the piano so I learnt Liberi Fatali (FFVIII) for the fun of it. There may or may not be a video on YouTube somewhere of me playing FFXII music either.
I’ve been lucky enough to see Arnie Roth in action for myself when he was here in Sydney for PLAY! A Video Game Symphony which was a mixture of music from several games. Most importantly, the Sydney concert was the world premiere performance of my favourite Final Fantasy battle theme: Dancing Mad. Nothing like seeing Dancing Mad played live on the Sydney Opera house organ for an approximately 6-minute solo.
Concert information
Tickets just went on sale on the 10th of May (last Friday). So, you’ve still got a good chance of grabbing tickets especially if you’re already based in Melbourne. In fact, at the time of writing, we saw several ticket types on sale on Ticketek Australia.
The concert is on Saturday, the 24th of August, 2019. It’ll be at the Melbourne Arena, VIC:
FYI this is what’s included in the VIP Meet & Greet tickets:
VIP ticket-holders will secure premium seating and have the opportunity to meet Final Fantasy composer, Yoko Shimomura and conductor Arnie Roth after the concert in an exclusive signing event. Tickets are limited!
For general information, you can head to the following pages:
- Homepage for Distant Worlds
- Distant Worlds: Melbourne info
- Buy tickets for Distant Worlds (Ticketek)
Images: SGC Media, MJR Presents
