Yesterday I attended the world premiere performance of this year's Kingdom Hearts concert tour. Here are my thoughts. Spoiler warning if you're going to one of these concerts and don't want to know about it beforehand.
This is the first time I've been to one of these concerts, as I don't live near Tokyo and haven't previously had the chance to attend one. But this year I took the plunge, and went together with my seven year old daughter, who since KHIII is now also a big Kingdom Hearts fan.
The queues were unbelievable. We arrived almost two hours before the concert was due to start, and there was already a sizeable queue to get in. But that was nothing compared to the queue into the merchandise hall. Luckily, we were able to get inside in time to queue again to buy a programme and some merchandise. I got the CD, and my daughter chose the Kingdom Keyblade baton.
The concert itself was split into two parts. Yoko Shimomura explains in the programme that she had originally expected to do a KHIII concert, but Tetsuya Nomura asked her to do the full story of KH, so the concert was split into two parts: the story so far, consisting of a series of suites for previous games in the series; and KHIII, likewise consisting of a series of suites of KHIII music. Excluding the 20 minute intermission, I think the concert ran for about two and a half hours.
The first half was full of favourites, and the theming was rather nice. It began with Dearly Beloved (III version), then went through each game in sequence. Most of these are included on the CD if you can get your hands on it. Not included are Re:Chain of Memories (which was Scent of Silence and Castle Oblivion, and I rather liked), Pretty Pretty Abilities from coded, Dream Drop Distance (which was also rather good — Dream Eaters, Link to All, and Majestic Wings), Music of Another Time (Union Cross, Back Cover, and 0.2 music, represented by Hand in Hand, Case of the Foretellers, and Wave of Darkness respectively), and boss medley Diabolic Bash.
The second half was glorious, especially towards the end. The opening was Face My Fears -KINGDOM Orchestra Instrumental Version- (unfortunately not on the CD). It was great, although I thought it sounded a little hollow compared to the orchestral version of Don't Think Twice — a comparison made more obvious since they used the opening demo movie for the imagery. All the suites concentrated on world music, including the battle themes, but also the gummi ship and gummi battle themes. They were refreshing and very nicely done.
But the real treat was undoubtedly the end, which began with the Overture to the Decisive Battle — joining all the Keyblade Graveyard battle themes into one suite — before continuing through Hikari instrumental into the ending sequence music, titled Rhapsody in Tres for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra. While we have both of these in other versions already (or at least we will whenever III's soundtrack is finally released!), their live performances were really spectacular, and it's a shame they aren't on the concert CD.
The encore was Don't Think Twice instrumental version, with Yoko Shimomura herself playing the piano. She was also the MC for the whole concert, and she brought out both Takeharu Ishimoto and Tsuyoshi Sekito to interview.
My favourite pieces of the whole concert were Roxas and Xion's themes in Overture to the Decisive Battle and, strangely enough, Hikari instrumental. Both of these had me crying tears of joy.
And then of course Tetsuya Nomura appearing and announcing an overview of the DLC was just the icing on the cake. It was actually quite surreal for me, because the mere idea of hearing this sort of news direct from the source rather than later through the Internet is not something I've ever thought of, let alone experienced before.
This is the first time I've been to one of these concerts, as I don't live near Tokyo and haven't previously had the chance to attend one. But this year I took the plunge, and went together with my seven year old daughter, who since KHIII is now also a big Kingdom Hearts fan.
The queues were unbelievable. We arrived almost two hours before the concert was due to start, and there was already a sizeable queue to get in. But that was nothing compared to the queue into the merchandise hall. Luckily, we were able to get inside in time to queue again to buy a programme and some merchandise. I got the CD, and my daughter chose the Kingdom Keyblade baton.
The concert itself was split into two parts. Yoko Shimomura explains in the programme that she had originally expected to do a KHIII concert, but Tetsuya Nomura asked her to do the full story of KH, so the concert was split into two parts: the story so far, consisting of a series of suites for previous games in the series; and KHIII, likewise consisting of a series of suites of KHIII music. Excluding the 20 minute intermission, I think the concert ran for about two and a half hours.
The first half was full of favourites, and the theming was rather nice. It began with Dearly Beloved (III version), then went through each game in sequence. Most of these are included on the CD if you can get your hands on it. Not included are Re:Chain of Memories (which was Scent of Silence and Castle Oblivion, and I rather liked), Pretty Pretty Abilities from coded, Dream Drop Distance (which was also rather good — Dream Eaters, Link to All, and Majestic Wings), Music of Another Time (Union Cross, Back Cover, and 0.2 music, represented by Hand in Hand, Case of the Foretellers, and Wave of Darkness respectively), and boss medley Diabolic Bash.
The second half was glorious, especially towards the end. The opening was Face My Fears -KINGDOM Orchestra Instrumental Version- (unfortunately not on the CD). It was great, although I thought it sounded a little hollow compared to the orchestral version of Don't Think Twice — a comparison made more obvious since they used the opening demo movie for the imagery. All the suites concentrated on world music, including the battle themes, but also the gummi ship and gummi battle themes. They were refreshing and very nicely done.
But the real treat was undoubtedly the end, which began with the Overture to the Decisive Battle — joining all the Keyblade Graveyard battle themes into one suite — before continuing through Hikari instrumental into the ending sequence music, titled Rhapsody in Tres for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra. While we have both of these in other versions already (or at least we will whenever III's soundtrack is finally released!), their live performances were really spectacular, and it's a shame they aren't on the concert CD.
The encore was Don't Think Twice instrumental version, with Yoko Shimomura herself playing the piano. She was also the MC for the whole concert, and she brought out both Takeharu Ishimoto and Tsuyoshi Sekito to interview.
My favourite pieces of the whole concert were Roxas and Xion's themes in Overture to the Decisive Battle and, strangely enough, Hikari instrumental. Both of these had me crying tears of joy.
And then of course Tetsuya Nomura appearing and announcing an overview of the DLC was just the icing on the cake. It was actually quite surreal for me, because the mere idea of hearing this sort of news direct from the source rather than later through the Internet is not something I've ever thought of, let alone experienced before.