Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Distant Worlds

In high school, and a bit in college, I played video games, mainly Play Station--when I tell people this, some people ask me if I have a younger brother, which I do. I suppose otherwise I might not have started playing video games. Not that many types of video games appealed to me, but I really liked the Final Fantasy series because it tells a story. I've never been interested in shooting/war video games, and played fighting games mainly because my brother played them. Though I stopped playing as an adult, I still love the music.



The composer for the Final Fantasy series, Nobuo Uematsu, is one of my favorite composers of all time. I had always wanted to see it in concert, and finally got an opportunity to this winter. About four months ago, I had randomly googled whether there would be any sort of Final Fantasy symphony in the New York area. I do this for Jay Chou and some other foreign artists who do not tour the US often. I found that the Distant Worlds series would be having two concerts in Newark, New Jersey--the concerts would be two different concerts, with a different song list. I spent a lot of time debating which one I wanted to go to, and then decided to go to both, which was a good decision--there were songs in both that I really wanted to see live.

The first show started at 3:00 pm. Fortunately, a friend of mine was able to drive us there. I had better seats for the 3:00 pm show, in the orchestra section, which was much better because there was a choir for the 3:00 show and not for the 8:00 show. I do go to a lot of concerts, but I think this one was one of the best that I've been to. It made me think of something another friend of mine had said a few years ago--I went to a concert by the xx with a few friends, which I enjoyed, but not nearly as much as one of them did, and she went on and on about how the music was so beautiful that she got chills. I don't quite remember her exact words, because I had been too busy thinking that I definitely didn't feel anywhere close to that (I liked it, just not to that level), and that it would be nice to love a band or type of music THAT much--and I went through all the music that I liked in my head, and remembered thinking that some of Nobuo Uematsu's work might meet that standard for me. And indeed, when one of my favorite songs came on, I actually did get chills.

There is no filming allowed, but here are some youtube clips of stuff that they played:

To Zanarkand

Suteki Da Ne

Liberi Fatali

Answers

Eyes on Me

One of the singers, Susan Calloway, has an amazing voice.

As for Newark, there is not so much to say about it, since I only went for the concert. There was an Irish Pub that was pretty good, but I suppose that applies to most towns.

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