For a video gamer, music is one of the most defining elements of the playing experience. Music is especially important in gaming because it is always there, looping infinitely in the background, enhancing our experience of scaling a blasting volcano or burrowing deep into the earth—or getting stuck on level 1-1 for hours. We quickly become familiar with the tracks in the games we play—so much so that after a long session, we know that a boss fight is coming up or that we have entered a new level solely upon hearing the first few notes of a background melody. 

Although the repetitive nature of many games' music ends up getting on our nerves, the best games define themselves through their soundtracks, enabling us to conjure every magical experience again and again just by playing the same old tracks. Rarely has this magic been conjured more strongly than it was with Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy.

I attended this symphonic medley of compositions from the Japanese role-playing-game series Final Fantasy last Friday night at UCLA’s Royce Hall. The venue—a beautiful Italian-inspired building with twin bell towers that looked copy-pasted straight from Assassin's Creed II on the outside and an organ console within—put the combined splendor of Little Bridges and Lyman Hall to shame. 

The pieces were performed by the world-traveling Distant Worlds Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied by the UCLA chorus. Soloists included composer Nobuo Uematsu himself on keyboard, conductor Arnie Roth on violin and soprano Susan Calloway. While the concert was a valuable cultural event in its own right, enjoyable to any enthusiast of orchestral music, it stood out perhaps even more because the repertoire was entirely composed of video game tracks, thereby broadening the intended audience to include anyone who had experienced Final Fantasy (a demographic not normally known for frequenting the symphony).

The night's entertainment began in earnest, however, with the iconic theme of Final Fantasy—a simple scale played over and over on a harp, with successive layers of choral and instrumental accompaniment enriching the piece until the harpist's line was barely audible. 

Besides bringing more than one nostalgic tear to my eye, the performance reminded me how far the series had come simply in terms of technological advancement. Final Fantasy, after all, began on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987 and achieved its highest popularity levels on the PlayStation 1 in 1997. That means that most of the pieces being performed at Distant Worlds were created in a 16-bit or MIDI composer—think of the music from Super Mario World, Doom and, of course, Final Fantasy VII for examples of the tracks typical of that era. The mere fact that such pieces could be translated so seamlessly and beautifully into a symphonic work demonstrates the true genius of composer Nobuo Uematsu.

 This final boss theme from Final Fantasy VI left my mouth hanging open for its entire duration due to a sheer unwillingness to believe that the piece had originally come from a video game. It was far more reminiscent of Bach’s baroque masterpiece "Toccata and Fugue in D minor," and felt like a true magnum opus that needed no context or visuals (even though they did supply plenty of those on a massive projection screen hanging behind the orchestra).

The night was rounded out with samplings from Final Fantasies V through XIV, covering a broad range of compositions from fan favorites such as a medley of the lovable Chocobo themes to more obscure pieces from Final Fantasy XI. As has become tradition, Final Fantasy VII's "One Winged Angel" was the encore, during which cheering completely drowned out the first verse.

An autograph and photo session was held after the concert for those lucky enough to hold a VIP pass (like myself), where one could meet performers Calloway and Roth as well as Uematsu. In addition, fans were unexpectedly entitled to an extra-special treat when series producer Hironobu Sakaguchi showed up at the concert to sign autographs, prompting a wild ten-minute ovation. I was lucky enough to get my copy of Final Fantasy VII signed by all four gaming celebrities, a powerful experience not only because my discs had just quintupled, but far more because I had just talked to four of the most creative and influential minds behind my favorite series.

Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy was a concert, in many ways, by fans and for fans. However, that didn't stop it from being truly memorable as a performance, and as a symphonic experience capable of impressing even the most hardened classical music connoisseurs. Beautiful and moving from start to finish, the show embodied all that Final Fantasy fans cherish in their series, and it stands as a darn good reason for the general public to show more interest in gaming, and (perhaps especially) in its music.