The Beat Goes On

Sephiroth Saves The Symphony

I asked him what he told his colleagues about what he does, picturing a "Sorry, I have to go conduct Final Fantasy music tonight" delivered to a bewildered monocle-wearer. "The colleagues that I work with that almost only work in the classical world may have no clue what that is, so there's some background information." He adds, though, that "the reality is, we don't live in such a sheltered world anymore. All the orchestras are looking around. They're looking at ways to build up a new audience. ... Conductors and music directors and musicians, they're all branching out and they're all involved with classicalization, whether it's symphony musicians playing in opera in LA, recording sessions, movie soundtracks [or] live symphony accompanying movies, they are musicians and they're doing more and more about that." When it comes to the Final Fantasy concerts and Play, he says "the word has kind of gotten out there already, certainly around North America, and I know that Europe and Asia are anxiously awaiting. Japan has had concerts for a long time, but there haven't been very many concerts around the rest of the world. And they're anxiously awaiting some of these live concerts coming in. And there are plans in place to have that happen." It's an unlikely story, but Aeris, Cloud and Sephiroth may save the symphony.

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire Shannon Drake.