Final Fantasy Piano Opera

I've been terrible with updating here, even when I've been to events related to Japan! ごめんね( ﾉД`)

This autumn the composer of Final Fantasy, Nobuo Uematsu, toured together with pianist Hiroyuki Nakayama and fortunatley they made a stop in Stockholm!

This was my first time to see Nobuo acctually, so it felt really special for me since I've admired his work for over 10 years! Just as the title implies the music was just played on piano, so no flashy effect etc. we might be used to in te original scores but I have to say the concert was beyond my expectations! I have a bit of a hard time just listening to piano or only guitar music. I think it's amazing to be able to enjoy a full set of instruments, it creates a completly different dynamic, but they had done an amazing job with re-working the songs, making them into longer scores mixing different songs. While playing the music we, the audience, got to watch various scenes from the games which I think added a good feeling to the experience.

The music which was performed was from Final Fantasy I to IX, I felt a bit sad they didn't include X which is my favorite game but しょうがない...

The most interesting part about this concert was the fact that inbetween the medleys Nobuo came up on stage and talked a bit about the songs and other various stuff. They also asked for special memories connected to Final Fantasy music from fans, and Nobuo picked some of those out and talked about them on stage. The weirdest moment was probably when a guy went down on his knee and proposed to his girlfriend! Afterwards they got to hear Melodies of Life from Final Fantasy IX.

Another fun part was when Hiroyuki got the question how it felt to work with Nobuo and he replied "like meeting God". He told us he'd been a fan of the Final Fantasy games and the music since he was a teenager, and even then he began playing the songs by himself on his piano.

If you bought a more expensive ticket you'd get to stay for a meet and greet with questions to Nobuo. I didn't, I had a Madonna concert 2 nighs afetrwards so I needed to save money. Hopefully I can attend something similaranother time!

Overall it was a very nice evening, I just can't get tired of anything related to Final Fantasy!

I found this poster at my uni!