'Play!' will be music to gamers' ears

Jason M. Paul, who has staged concerts for the late Luciano Pavarotti and the Three Tenors, also loves video games.

He was part of a marketing agency that handled corporate entertainment and environmental design for Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sun Microsystems, Midway Entertainment and Square Enix, to name a few.

Throughout his time working with those companies, he took a hard look at video-game music.

And, thanks to his love of the game "Final Fantasy," he organized the 2004 "Dear Friends: Music from 'Final Fantasy' " symphony concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

"The first idea was to create a show that was unique and something that could evolve," Paul said during a phone call from San Francisco. "What happened was, I felt there was further potential for a more all-encompassing, best-of video-game music concert than a specific title."

To achieve that goal, Paul focused on two major points.

"I wanted to create a program that was endorsed by the composers themselves to participate, … by writing original orchestrations of the music and to edit the video to the music But also create a show that featured both Eastern and Western composers."

"We have music in the video game genre that is worldwide. Obviously, many of the classics originated from Japan, but the West has contributed immensely. I wanted to create a well-rounded program."

Paul took the "Final Fantasy" concert as a blueprint to create the show.

"Play!" is a bigger show than what would be expected of a typical video/film orchestral project, Paul said. He uses three screens and projects the images from the game choreographing it to the music. In addition, the screens not only project the gameplay action and images, but also, from time to time, they cut away to the orchestra.

"We basically are trying to combine the beauty of both the art of the music as well as the beauty in the art of the music and the imagery of the games."

Paul said it was his experience as a tour manager with the Three Tenors and Pavarotti that helped him conceive the video game symphonies.

"I was in Costa Rica doing a stadium show with Pavarotti where they actually put 'Final Fantasy's' "Aeris Theme" in the stadium on this state-of-the-art sound system. Everyone was just blown away from the quality of the music."