“In the world of dragons and spacecrafts”
Concerts of symphonic orchestra music from video games took place in Kyiv and Lviv
You can hardly surprise the present generation of teenagers with dragons, orcs, goblins, and other fantastic creatures, from which they often have to save the world when they play popular video games. Virtual space for a significant cohort of Ukrainians has long become an integral part of real life. Although psychologists repeatedly stress on the damage to the human psyche from excessive immersion in virtual life, the number of gamers (people who actively play video games) hasn’t decreased and the virtual space became for them some kind of cultural code.
Symphony orchestra Cantabile Orchestra together with an ensemble of early and folk music Kings & Beggars decided to introduce the army of “world saviors” to the live music. This is how the idea of the project “Music of Virtual Worlds” (series of concerts featuring music from video games) came into being. Currently, the orchestra gives concerts only in Kyiv and Lviv.
“Music for any high-quality game is always recorded by a symphony orchestra. That’s how we came up with an interesting idea to bring music from TV sets and computers to concert halls. There will always be audience for such concerts,” Oleksa MELNYK, host of the concert, editor-in-chief of the portal PlayUA, told The Day. “I think it is a promising trend of the new culture. The age of gamers goes up over time. In Europe, for example, an average gamer is a person aged 30-35. In Ukraine the age is 15-18. It is a low age limit and, as a rule, young people of such age do not always have the financial capability to purchase concert tickets. As far as I know, there is no such orchestra in the CIS countries and in the countries of Eastern Europe. It is a truly original way of introducing young people to music.”
According to Melnyk, they choose the games, music from which they perform during the concerts, following the advice of gamers community in social networks. But, of course, there are certain limitations to the complexity of what users see and hear in video games.
It is interesting that the concerts are also organized in a form of a game. The audience is the main character and they choose the maze they want to take to the finals, that is the order in which they want to listen to the suggested compositions. The tracks are announced by brief description of a video game and its creators. On the stage the audience can see the fragments from popular video games on special screens, as well as musicians performing the music.
The concert in Kyiv was held on October 12 at the House of Education and Culture, in Lviv – on September 28 at the Palace of Arts. This time the concerts featured music from popular video games “Heroes of Might and Magic,” “Neverwinter Nights,” “World of Warcraft,” “Bard’s Tale,” “The Witcher,” “Stronghold,” “Dragon Age,” “Assassin’s Creed,” “Mass Effect,” “Bioshock Infinite,” “StarCraft,” “Dune,” and others. The concert ended with the composition from the cult game “Super Mario” which was released by Nintendo Company in 1985.
