Press Play Program

We acknowledge that the land we make music on is the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We pay respect to Elders past and present and recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land. We acknowledge that this is of continuing importance to the Kaurna people living today. We extend this respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are with us for this performance today.

Program

Masato Nakamura Arr. Hedlund Sonic The Hedgehog Suite
Harry Gregson-Williams Arr. Buc Metal Gear Suite
Claude Debussy & Dan Golding Untitled Goose Game: Untitled Concerto for Orchestra and Honk
Greg Edmondsen Arr. Skeet Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Theme
Martin O’Donnell & Michael Salvatori Arr. Skeet Halo 3: One Final Effort
Jessica Curry Arr. Fowler Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture: An Early Harvest
Ari Pulkkinen Arr. Skeet Angry Birds Theme
Christopher Larkin Arr. Wells Hollow Knight Suite

– INTERVAL –

Nobuo Uematsu Arr. Ankarblom Suite from Final Fantasy IX
Hikaru Utada Kingdom Hearts: Hikari
Hans Zimmer Arr. Skeet Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II Theme
Austin Wintory Journey: Nascence | Apotheosis
Koji Kondo Arr. Raine The Legend Of Zelda
Lena Raine Arr. Wells Celeste: Reach For The Summit
Brian Tyler Arr. Hedlund Assassin’s Creed Iv: Black Flag Suite
Hirokazu Tanaka Arr. Skeet Tetris Theme
Koji Kondo Arr. Raine Theme from Super Mario

Program Note

Ask anyone to hum a video game tune, and their first rendition might just be from Super Mario Bros. and its iconic theme by composer Koji Kondo. There’s a good reason that this catchy melody, and many others like it, have stood the test of time. 

Video games exist at the unique intersection of play, storytelling, cinema, and immersive theatre. Whether you load up a quick session of Angry Birds or dive into the grand, cinematic adventures of Uncharted, you are not watching a story or observing an experience – you are actively becoming part of it yourself. As each game casts you in the role of its protagonist, a virtual world stands ready to respond to your choices – as does an entire score.  

When you become the character on screen, their themes become your own. 

Video game music functions uniquely within its medium. Rather than a set of compositions to be experienced in a singular, linear fashion, game scores are crafted to be interactive, malleable, and directly responsive to you. Your actions may gently alter your musical experience or drastically redefine what you hear. The resulting soundscape is ultimately a collaboration between the composer and yourself.  

To quote Austin Wintory, the man behind the globally celebrated game score for Journey, “when you poke it, it will wobble.” 

Wintory is part of the current generation of composers creatively shaping the sound of modern gaming – a tapestry of broad aesthetic freedom and immense interactive possibilities. As technology opens more doors to developers and musicians, it allows contemporary game scores to sound like anything, from the twinkles of a solo instrument to the might of a symphony orchestra.   

The origins of game music, however, are as humble as they are important. The aesthetics of early games were defined by the limitations of their hardware, which did not yet have the capacity to play audio recordings. Their sound was generated from chips within the console through a limited set of channels, thus bestowing the name “chiptunes” upon those old, beloved compositions. Much like string quartets, early baroque, and four-part vocal writing, the first game composers could do a lot with a little, transforming bleeps, bloops, and bursts of white noise into the most memorable melodies they could imagine.  

The strong melodic writing in these themes, especially in response to limitation, would render them timeless in the hearts of gamers. To this day, artists like Koji Kondo (Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda), Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), Masato Nakamura (Sonic the Hedgehog), and Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts) are celebrated pillars of the artform, both for their original chiptunes and their more elaborately realized scores in later years. 

In addition to crafting originals, game composers have long adapted classical repertoire and traditional works in their music. Tetris, first released in 1985, featured composer Hirokazu Tanaka adapting the 19^th Century Russian folk song “Korobeiniki” as one of its main themes, after previously looking to Bach and Tchaikovsky. Closer to the present, Australian composer Dan Golding transformed Claude Debussy’s playful piano preludes into a highly interactive score for 2019’s award-winning Untitled Goose Game. The way each note seems to follow the mischievous titular bird, it is almost as if Debussy himself were sitting next to you, live scoring your every move. 

Golding is one of two homegrown talents featured in this concert, the other being Adelaide’s own Christopher Larkin, who scored the global smash hit Hollow Knight with bombastic aplomb. With a 25-minute suite specifically arranged for the concert stage by Australia’s own Jessica Wells, Larkin’s score weighs in as one of the meatier segments of the performance, and it even includes a taste of his music for the upcoming sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong.   

These Australian-made gems are two of many successes in the world of “indie” games – big, ambitious creations made by tiny teams. Other such triumphs include Lena Raine’s lively electronics for Celeste, Ari Pulkkinen’s plucky tunes for Angry Birds, and Jessica Curry’s lyrical orchestrations for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. At the other end of the scale, the biggest games in the world wear their blockbuster status on their sleeve, boasting cinematic visuals and massive scores, occasionally at the hands of film and TV composers. Hans Zimmer (Dune) and Harry Gregson-Williams (The Chronicles of Narnia) both tackled political tensions in Call of Duty and Metal Gear Solid, respectively, while Brian Tyler (The Fast and the Furious) and Greg Edmonson (Firefly) took on the grand adventures of Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted.  

Video game music is both singular in its existence and undefined in its nature. It is not a genre, style, or an aesthetic, but rather a medium for boundless expression. Through its flourishing relationship with the live stage, game music transcends the screen to reach the hearts of gamers and non-gamers alike. 

© Meena Shamaly, 2025

Artists

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra