By Winifred Phillips  |  Contact  |  Follow

Hi!  I'm videogame composer Winifred Phillips.  These are the times that try our musical souls, with live concerts enduring an avalanche of cancelations and postponements due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  For our community as game music composers and game audio pros, this means that most video game concert tours have gone silent.  As one of the composers whose work was featured in the Assassin's Creed Symphony World Tour, I was honored to join the players onstage during the Montreal performance last year (pictured below).  It was a thrill to have my music from Assassin's Creed Liberation performed in Berlin, Milan, and all around the world.

Now, I've sadly watched as the coronavirus postponed the entire UK leg of the tour, with no resumption date as of yet. This fate is common to live concert events around the world.

While we all have reason to be sad about this, there is some light in the darkness.  A few touring companies and orchestras have nimbly shifted to online live-streaming events as a way to sustain their fan bases and keep enthusiasm alive through the Covid-19 pandemic.  Other video game music shows are holding things together while continuing to sell tickets, with optimistic plans to resume their in-person tours later in 2021.  As both game audio pros and game music fans, we all want to enjoy and support this music, so let's check out what's happening this year in the world of VGM concerts!  We'll start by taking a look at those organizations that have moved their concerts online with live-streamed events.  After that, we'll check out the concert tours that are still selling tickets with hopes to return to their stages sometime later this year.

Online Concerts

The 8-Bit Big Band Live Stream

Ever dreamed that you could hear your favorite video game tunes reimagined by an awesome old-school jazz big band?  The 8-Bit Big Band has been making these dreams come true since they released their first album in 2018.  Located in New York City, this jazz force-of-nature is set to appear in a live show on Saturday May 1st 2021, in which they'll perform their greatest hits at Sony Hall in NYC.  While the venue isn't selling tickets for in-person attendees, the show will be live-streamed (with tickets available for online audience members.)  As an example of what to expect during the performance, here's one of their most recent YouTube uploads featuring their Sinatra-style cover performance of "Want You Gone" from Portal 2:

At their charmingly retro website, the 8-Bit Big Band has provided loads of free goodies for fans, including downloadable sheet music and lots of Spotify playlists.  For those of us who want to give back, the site offers merch that supports the band and simultaneously donates half the proceeds to Meals 4 Heroes (providing meals from local restaurants to New York City medical professionals.)

Game Music Festival

Every year, the Game Music Festival gathers together top composers, great musicians and game music fans for a two-day festival of live concerts, masterclass workshops, Q&A sessions, and community events taking place at the National Forum of Music in Krakow Poland.  This year, the event was forced to scale back attendance sharply, in keeping with Covid-19 regulations.  Nevertheless, the Game Music Festival organization managed to avoid cancelation with careful planning and strict safety protocols.

As a part of this reimagined festival, both nights of concert performances were live-streamed free to the public, and afterwards the recordings were made available online.  Here's the entire live-stream of the second night of performances (the concert begins 27 minutes into the recording):

To enable fans to watch the first night of performances, the Game Music Festival also uploaded the video of that full-length concert to YouTube.  For those of us who would like to financially support the Game Music Festival (and receive some bonus goodies as a reward), the Game Music Festival has pulled together a collection of digital soundtracks, posters and video files to show their gratitude.  Check it out here.

The Game Music Ensemble at UCLA

Founded in 2014 at the University of California in Los Angeles, the Game Music Ensemble at UCLA maintains orchestra, chamber and choir ensembles dedicated to the performance of video game music.  Their talented student members mount large-scale concerts semi-annually, interspersed with chamber performances throughout the year.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the organization has moved much of its operations online, including some live-streamed chamber music performances.  In addition, the Game Music Ensemble has begun to release full-length concert videos from previous seasons via its YouTube channel.  Here's a video from their current YouTube series spotlighting their Legend of Zelda: The History of Hyrule concert from February 2019:

Other videos in this Legend of Zelda series feature performances from Temple of Time, Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess, and Breath of the Wild.  For those of us who would like to give back, the official web site has provided a page for those who want to help support the Game Music Ensemble at UCLA.

The United States Army Field Band Virtual Concert Series

Headquartered in Maryland and founded as a public service organization, the United States Army Field Band responded quickly to the Covid-19 pandemic by launching a series of interactive online performances that began last March.  The music in this virtual concert series includes a wide range of musical styles, from Broadway to Beethoven to Bebop, performed by expert musicians-in-uniform.  Among these offerings, the Army Field Band has managed to slip in a few concerts of music "for the video game generation."  These have included a jam session with a Guitar Heroes theme, a livestream dedicated to Super Mario Bros, and a more wide-ranging performance of the best of video game music in general.  As a rule, all performances by the "Musical Ambassadors of the Army" must be offered free of charge to the public.  Here's an excerpt from one of their video game themed livestreams:

The streaming schedule of upcoming programming from the Army Field Band is available here.  If you'd like to hear more, their latest album is entitled The Soundtrack of the American Soldier, and includes a suite of music from the video game Medal of Honor.

Gaming Sounds

Taken all together, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the WDR Radio Choir, the WDR Big Band, and the WDR Funkhaus Orchestra are among the most renowned musical ensembles in Germany.  These ensembles mount hundreds of live concerts a year, along with approximately a hundred broadcast performances for WDR radio and television.  Each ensemble has its own specialization, and the WDR Funkhaus Orchestra embraces audience favorites – serving as the equivalent of a beloved Pops orchestra for the German concert-going public.  After the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the WDR Funkhaus Orchestra cancelled its live performances and took its concert schedule online in live-steams simulcast via WDR 3 radio.  This included their Gaming Sounds concert, which took place on November 20th 2020 in Cologne with a live-stream event.  Afterwards, they generously posted full-length videos of the performances from the event, including the Victoria 2 Concert Suite, The Seventh Whistler (Everybody's Gone to the Rapture), An Early Harvest (Everybody's Gone to the Rapture), The Main Theme from The Lion's Song, The Allies Main Theme from Hearts of Iron 4, Nascence/Apotheosis from Journey, Delphinus Delphis from Abzu, the Tetris Theme, and the Main Theme from Angry Birds:

Now we've taken a look at some of what's happening with live-streaming concerts in the world of video game music.  So let's move on to those concert tours that are still planning to mount traditional performances later in the year.... and let's keep our fingers crossed that all goes well!

IN-PERSON CONCERT EVENTS