Distant Worlds Recap

By popular demand (my sister asked about it) I'm going to talk a bit about the Final Fantasy concert I attended on Saturday. Maybe other people will take interest in it from this post and will come along the next time one of these it put on so I don't have to sit by myself. As a bit of a spoiler I did think at one point that it was so awesome it would have been worth flying in from NB to attend if I'd been living out there instead of here in Toronto. Which makes me think it may make a worthwhile vacation to travel somewhere else at some point to catch a concert...

At any rate, I picked my ticket up at the Will Call booth thing and headed in. The theatre (Sony Centre for the Performing arts) was very nice. I was surprised to find cup holders on the seats like in a movie theatre. (Well, they were much smaller - big enough for a coffee or a bottle of pop.) I went to see if they'd sell something to put in the cup holder and got a $4 bottle of Coke. I wasn't sure how long it would take to find the place so I had about 20 minutes to sit around and wait for things to get started. Going in I was a little worried I was going to be underdressed for the theatre and I feel like I was. But I wasn't underdressed for the crowd that showed up. Some people were in fancy outfits but a lot of people were in jeans.

Eventually the lights went down and they started with Prelude. I'm not sure which Prelude it was, but it started off properly with just one woman playing a humungous harp. Eventually the rest of the orchestra came in and played out the rest of whichever Prelude it was. Then they jumped into Liberi Fatali from FFVIII. On top of the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony they also had a choir (TELUS Choir is what it sounded like they were called?) which was used to good effect in Liberi Fatali. There was also a projection running video on a big screen overhead which kicked in during this song.

Break for introductions from the conductor Arnie Roth. Huge applause for Nobuo Uematsu. No applause at all for the Sony Centre which was a little awkward.

Shift into Victory Fanfare from FFVIII. It was all of 10 seconds, just the little blurb that happens when you win a fight. Shift into Don't Be Afraid from FFVIII accompanied with a video replaying scenes from one of the first parts of FFVIII (where you have Seifer in your party and then get chased through town by a gigantic spider robot thing). Song ended as Squall made it to the boat and Quistis blew up the spider robot. Very nicely done. Now I want to play FFVIII again.

Break for more talking to say what they're playing next. You're Not Alone from FFIX and Blinded by Light from FFXIII. The video for You're Not Alone made me want to play FFIX again. I had to look away from the video screen during Blinded by Light because I haven't played all the way through that game and was afraid the video would have spoilers.

Break to talk about the next 3 songs. Theme of Love from FFIV, Ronfaure from FFXI, Zanarkand from FFX. Theme of Love used video from the DS remake which surprised me a little. I overheard a girl behind me say she wanted to have Theme of Love as the song for her first dance at her wedding. Ronfaure used a video sequence from FFXI that I don't think I'd seen. Maybe it's from cutscenes further along one of the city rank chains? I don't know. This song didn't really do it for me in orchestral form. I searched for it on youtube and the original is awesome, though. Zanarkand was great and the video, again, made me want to play the game. It featured the scene where Yuna comes out of a crypt and faints on the stairs and Kimahri catches her before anyone else can. Go Kimahri! (He needs experience, you know.)

Break to tell us intermission is coming shortly. But first, Clash on the Big Bridge from FFV and a Chocobo medley starting with the new FFXIV version. The video for Clash on the Big Bridge was various fights from the game against Gilgamesh. Awesome song. Chocobo had a cute little video on characters from different games riding Chocobos. Three of the scenes were from 'travel all around the world on a chocobo for a bonus'. It had a few scenes from FFXIII with Satz and his baby hair chocobo which was pretty great.

20 minute intermission. I pulled out my 3DS to play some Zelda and felt bad. I really should have brought FFIV or something so I could play a FF game at the concert instead of stupid Zelda.

Return to Bombing Mission from FFVII. Video appropriately is of the bombing mission at the start of the game. Then Fisherman's Horizon from FFVIII. Not one of the songs I think of when I think of FFVIII but it was pretty fantastic in orchestral form.

Break for some talking. Story about how Arnie keep trying to get Nobuo to play on stage but he doesn't feel worthy of playing with classically trained orchestras. Says he finally found a song where Nobuo's keyboarding would fit in enough, but Nobuo would only agree if Arnie also played the song. So he goes off stage and comes back with a violin and Nobuo comes on stage to man the double keyboard. The song? Dark World from Final Fantasy VI. Definitely a lot of ominous keyboarding going on there. I was too far back to really watch Nobuo do much of anything and the song is really plodding and depressing by nature so it wasn't the best. But having Nobuo there and actually doing anything at all was incredible. It also seemed weird to have the conductor be rocking a crazy violin solo one second and then conducting the orchestra the next. I don't understand anything about conducting but I can't imagine that was easy or optimal.

Long break as they put away Arnie's violin and the keyboards. Little discussion about how Cloud has a special message for us while we wait. Video screen starts up with Cloud lying on the ground and Aeris standing over him. (I think he falls through a floor and lands in a garden or something? I need to play FFVII again.) Then fakes speech bubble asking some lady to marry some dude. There's a big spotlight on the crowd a couple sections over and then a thumbs up appears. Lots of cheering. Lucky guy. His wife to be likes FF music!

Next up: Aeris' Theme from FFVII and The Man With A Machine Gun from FFVIII. The video for Aeris' Theme didn't show Aeris dying (I guess to protect people from spoilers? Maybe I could have watched the FFXIII one after all.) But did show right before Sephiroth jumps down and ended with the bouncing materia she drops. The Man With A Machine Gun had lots of clips of Laguna and friends in random encounters. It is such an incredible song, both in game and by an orchestra.

Break for some more talking about how this next song is a favourite. They introduce three classically trained soloists to sing the parts for Maria and Draco. The opera song from FFVI. This song in particular was obviously redone for an orchestra. What with the opera in game getting interrupted by Ultros and all... It was also much longer than any of the other songs. One of the opera singers wasn't loud enough to hear over the orchestra which was a little sad (and likely an issue with not boosting his mic enough?) but the other two were great.

More talking about how we're almost done. One last song to go. I'm thinking this has to be One Winged Angel or J-E-N-O-V-A since we haven't really had enough FFVII songs yet. Nope. It's Terra's Theme from FFVI. It's a great song to finish the evening since they're able to finish it off with the scene at the start of FFVI with the 3 magitek devices marching on Narshe while they post the credits from the show. PS: I really want to play FFVI now.

Crazy applause at the end. They bring out the opera singers and Nobuo for their bows. Nobuo gets a standing ovation. Then they mention that they probably have time for one more song. He says something about how if they didn't have a choir they'd need to get our help for this song. We do have a choir, but he thinks we should still help sing a three note word in the song. I'd done a little reading beforehand and knew what this had to be. (I'd read about people having to sing the latin words in One Winged Angel at other events.) He does a little spiel about what we have to do and gets the piano guy to play the tune for us. DE-DE-DOO. The video guy puts the letters SE-PHI-ROTH on the screen in case people hadn't clued in yet. Then he gets Nobuo to sing it just in case we can't read either. It was quite the production teaching us to sing SE-PHI-ROTH but was absolutely worth it.

Then they play One Winged Angel with the video showing lots of clips of Sephiroth and the latin words super-imposed. We let the choir (and Nobuo) handle the latin stuff and just chimed in with SE-PHI-ROTH. It was awesome.

Then another standing ovation. Arnie and Nobuo go off stage and comes back on for repeated bows a few times since we just won't stop clapping. Eventually they give up and just bring the lights up and we leave.


All told I believe the represented games were:

FFI - 1
FFIV - 1
FFV - 1
FFVI - 3
FFVII - 3
FFVIII - 5
FFIX - 1
FFX - 1
FFXI - 1
FFXIII - 1
FFXIV - 1

All but the song from XIII were composed by Nobuo. I'm happy and unsurprised that FFVIII had the most songs since the music in that game is really incredible. VI and VII also having more than one song makes sense, too. The opera and One Winged Angel are such iconic parts of the Final Fantasy music library that they pretty much have to do them and there's some other great stuff there too.

I was a little disappointed they didn't do Dancing Mad, Maybe I'm A Lion, or the three awesome songs with actual lyrics (Eyes on Me, Real Emotion, 1000 Words) but the ones they chose were so good I can't complain.

Who wants to hit London in November?