Watching Nobuo Uematsu Live at Con Tiki – True Melodies of Life

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, while many people spend the 25th of December unwrapping presents or eating way too much food, I spend it watching a live stream concert of one video game’s greatest composers, Nobuo Uematsu, at Con Tiki.

Nobuo Uematsu’s live concert played on Christmas day for two hours with a performance of his works in games like Final Fantasy, Terra Battle 2, and Fantasian. While Uematsu played the keyboard, he was accompanied by Chihiro Fujioka on percussion, Yasushi Yokokawa on guitar, and Xiao on vocals. Each performed great and was very much in sync with Uematsu.

I’ll admit, I’d never been to a concert over a live stream and was skeptical if it could really work. A big part of the fun of any concert is the fact that the music is played in front of you with the legendary musician in the same room as you.

I wasn’t the only one though, Uematsu pretty much said the same thing on stream:

“It is the first time for us doing this kind of live stream performance. It’s difficult to do live without applause. We usually expect some kind of interaction between actual people right there.”

He has a point, it did feel a bit like I was just watching a recording on Youtube, but with that being said, it was a very enchanting experience either way.

Uematsu delivered a musical crash course on a range of his various soundtracks. These included a medley of ‘Eternal Wind’ from Final Fantasy III and ‘Blue Field’ from Final Fantasy VIII,  ‘High Sky’ from Terra Battle 2, and the ‘Main Theme’ of Fantasian.

I’m not the most familiar with his later works in the latter two games but didn’t stop me from feeling the weight and emotion of the composition. I felt like as whisked away to the fantastical worlds these pieces were written for and it made me want to look them up and listen to them again later on.

The highlight of the concert however was the rendition of the main theme of Final Fantasy IX ‘Melodies of Life’. One of my personal favorite Final Fantasy songs from one of my favorite games in the series.

It was simply sublime. The power of Xiao’s vocal combined with the beautiful score brought me back to the dangerous yet hopeful world of FFIX and the characters that I got attached to throughout the adventure. It reminded me of Zidane and Garnet’s romance, the charming buffoonery of Steiner and poor Vivi questioning his own existence. A voice from the past indeed.

The only real complaint that I had is that they didn’t provide the names for the songs being played or any kind of translation for Uematsu whenever he spoke. I was actually only able to get the quotes above because other viewers were kind enough to translate them in the chat. Thankfully the later section of the concert did have subtitles since it was telling a story however it would have been nice to fully understand what insight Uematsu was giving to the audience.

After a short break, Uematsu gave up a surprise Christmas gift with a performance of a couple of Japanese Christmas songs. It was very cute and made me feel warm in a holiday spirit sort of way.

The final part was a musical story titled ‘The Story of Blik-0’ narrated by Rie Tozuka. It is based on a short story that Uematsu wrote for Fantasian. It’s centered around a young robot named Blik-0 growing up and learning about the world. It has a rather Pinocchio feel to it, about a young robot learning to become more human, albeit with a more tragic ending.

Overall, despite the subtitle setback, being able to spend my Christmas listening to one of my favorite game composers, Nobuo Uematsu at Con Tiki was a lovely little present. You can feel the love and emotion in each piece that was played and a true charm in each musician.

You can still watch a recording of the performance until the 2nd of January and at only $26, it is well worth it for any fan of Fantasy Fantasy or if you just want to get lost in fantasy music in general.

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