Twin Cities’ first video game music orchestra takes the stage Friday night

The soaring melodies of iconic video games such as “Kingdom Hearts” and “Final Fantasy VII” will take center stage Friday night during the first live performance of the Twin Cities Gamer Symphony Orchestra – Minnesota’s one and only video game music orchestra.

In cities across the globe, growing popularity and mainstream interest in video games have led to the creation of gamer orchestras, some of which exclusively play music from a specific series of games such as “The Legend of Zelda” or “Sonic the Hedgehog.” Up until August when the Twin Cities Gamer Symphony Orchestra was formed, the concept had missed Minnesota.

Matt Silverberg, a percussionist and co-founder of the orchestra, said the idea came from the group’s president, Kenny Schuster, who assists with running a nonprofit that puts on Minnesota’s annual video game and music convention VGM CON.

“We all said, ‘Hell yeah, we definitely want to do this,’” said Silverberg, a 30-year-old professional percussionist and marimba player.

The orchestra has 62 members, and it allowed anyone to join without a requirement that they audition. There was an expectation that everyone practice, but Silverberg said they didn’t want to discriminate based on skill level, partially because they weren’t sure how much interest they would receive.

Silverberg and his bandmates recruited members ranging from full-time musicians and music educators to amateur musicians, all of whom have a love of video games. A majority of the musicians are millennials, though there are some as young as high school students.

On Friday at 7:30 p.m., the orchestra will perform in the auditorium for Humboldt High School in St. Paul. The inaugural performance is titled “Power: On” and will feature the theme music from games including “Halo,” “Civilization,” “Myst” and more. It is free to attend and will be streamed online at twitch.tv/twincitiesgso.

Bianca Najera, a professional flautist who also serves as a publicity director for the orchestra, said she thinks there’s a stronger connection and joy gamers can get out of performing video game music. Najera and some other orchestra members serve on a committee that arranges the music for their performances and decides which games they will perform.

“Even when you put in hours and hours into a video game, that soundtrack just becomes part of your core memory, so it’s really fun to hear all these musicians come up with their own arrangements,” Najera said.

For Najera and Silverberg, video games have always been a passion. In a phone interview both fondly recalled opening up new consoles at Christmas. For Najera, her favorite game soundtracks are “Zelda,” and “NieR: Automata.”

The orchestra operates as a nonprofit, and none of its members are paid, though it has received funding from its parent nonprofit Gamer’s Rhapsody and some local businesses that sponsored Friday’s concert. The money has been used to rent the orchestra’s rehearsal space at the Humboldt High School auditorium and to pay the ASCAP Music Licensing fee, which is necessary to legally perform the video game songs and pay the composers and arrangers of the original versions, Silverberg said.

He said copyright issues are additional hurdles for ensembles wanting to perform video game music and keep the genre from being more widely-played.

As millennials and others who have played games continue to age, Silverberg and Najera said they believe U.S. society is starting to embrace video games more as an artform instead of just a pastime.

“Now that we’re the adults and I don’t really care what people think about me anymore, we can really start to showcase our nerd-dom, and I can talk to people about how the game ‘Banjo-Kazooie’ was one of the most influential sountracks in my life,” Silverberg said.