You may have heard of Eminence. Or, you may not have, in which case you’re missing out on one of the most interesting things happening in symphonic game music.
I wrote about them quite a few years ago when I still lived in Melbourne; unlike many other things in my life, I think I actually got it right at the time. It’s about the music, sure, but it’s also about the importance of what Hiroaki Yura was trying to do by refreshing what is largely a dying market (in a very literal sense – have you been to a symphony recently?) through challenging what ‘classical’ music really means.
Classical symphonies have been stagnating for decades now; attendance rates are falling and the perceived relevance to your average person is at an all time low. Put it this way – how many symphonies have you or people you know been to over the last year? Now, to put it in context, how many people do you know have gone to see Wicked, anything by Cirque de Soleil, or generic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical #52? Classical music has an image problem, and it’s a big one.
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra would disagree, I’m sure – they’d say they’re already trying to appeal to younger markets. They do the “MSO Pops”, they push John Williams, and they even do a bit of Star Wars when the occasion calls. But, and here’s the thing, none of these actually appeal to the market they’re trying to talk to, those who would otherwise never go to a symphony. Listening to a live movie score can be an excellent introduction to orchestral music but, fundamentally, it’s still listening to the same content as it was originally scored, just live.
Eminence takes a different path – they deliberately recreate the music from the source material, translating it from what’s often highly electronic and digitised music into new arrangements that are suitable for orchestral performance. More importantly, they do a spectacular job at it, good enough to draw people like Kow Otani, Go Shiina, Yasunori Mitsuda, and Cris Velasco to their performances. Saying that Eminence’s latest concert was one of the biggest, if not the biggest get-together of game-music composers ever isn’t an overstatement.
I also run a photography business and, thanks to coordination between myself, Eminence (thanks again Danny), and PALGN (whose articles can be read here, here, and here), we peered behind the scenes of Eminence’s latest concert at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. I followed them through the evening, documenting their rehearsals, their back-stage preparations, and their eventual performance. And, now you can too.
The results of this intimate experience can be seen in the following photoessay, Eminence: A Night in Fantasia, 2009. I hope you enjoy it – I did.
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Tags: Eminence, Games, music, Photography
“Put it this way – how many symphonies have you or people you know been to over the last year?”
Quite a few, actually. On average, I’d estimate that I go to the Symphony up to eight times a year, and quite often there are other people my age there, especially when the MSO does a film music evening. Sure, it isn’t as popular as it was when Strauss was premiering every other week, but hey, you can’t have everything!
Eminence is fantastic in its own right, but I’m holding out hope that Tommy Tallarico will eventually grace our shores with Video Games Live.
I’d definitely argue that you’re not entirely representative though, Dan. And, how many of those other attendees are either musicians or close friends with musicians?
I’d love to see VGL as well; I think we really need more cultural events like these.