Saturday, October 11, 2008

vgl - uab - the review


Five stars out of five.

A few lines from the review. I highlighted my favorite parts:

Video Games Live, a pre-packaged amalgam of video montages and game scores performed by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, descended on the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center with all the subtly of a digital air raid.

The most impressive, thought-provoking part of Video Games Live was its audience - a 1,300-plus throng made up mostly of teenage and 20-something gamers, many of whom surely never voluntarily set foot inside a symphony concert until Thursday night.

The scores for epic games such as "Final Fantasy," "Civilization" and "World of Warcraft" -- with their serious, insistent rhythms and vocalizing choir that sounds like it could launch into "Carmina Burana" at any second -- are especially intense.

The ASO and the wonderful UAB chamber singers laid into their roles enthusiastically while, onscreen, strange digital vistas emerged and eons of time compressed into five-minute chunks. It is easy to see why gamers get lost in such deliciously manageable musical and visual environments, and why, in comparison, the gnarly complexities of Mahler and Beethoven can seem, well, gnarly.

Full review here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yo! Wanted to thank everyone in the choir for doing such an amazing job!! We hope to see you next year!!


Tommy Tallarico