Anime Boston 2010: The Video Game Orchestra Featuring Nobuo Uematsu

Anime Boston 2010 featured the Video Game Orchestra, a hometown performance group organized by Shota Nakama at the Berklee College of Music. The VGO has performed in the Boston area a number of times to sold-out shows, culmunating in two weekends' worth of shows at the Hynes Convention center between Penny Arcade Expo East last weekend and this weekend's Anime Boston 2010. The group is composed of a 45 piece symphonic orchestra, a 40 person choir and a 5 person rock band, as well as a smaller chamber music group composed of members of the rock and symphonic groups.

This weekend's show featured music from a number of different video games presented in a wide variety of ways. The early part of the show consisted of the full symphonic group plus various pieces of the rock combo at different times. They played music from Mario Galaxy, the original Mario Brothers in a jazz-like arrangement, Silent Hill, Super Mario World, and Blue Dragon. After a short break they came back with the 5 person chamber group to play selections from Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger. They were followed by the 5 person rock combo playing a selection from Castlevania and one song from Blue Dragon featuring a lead singer from the choir.

After a short break the full symphonic group returned plus the choir and the rock combo to play selections from Myst, God of War 1&2, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater featuring Kristen Swine on lead vocals and a standing salute from a number of the audience members, and Kingdom Hearts. The performance closed with a compilation from Final Fantasy 7 featuring composer Nobuo Uematsu on keyboards for a portion of the performance. Mr. Uematsu was greeted with a standing ovation and seemed genuinely pleased to be a part of the performance and very appreciative of the audience.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misspelled Nobuo Uematsu's name as "Nobu Umetsu." Toonzone News regrets the error.