When Suntory Hall opened its doors in October 1986, it made history as Tokyo’s first dedicated concert hall for classical music performances. And within that first year came another landmark – because on the night of August 20, 1987, it wasn’t the music Beethoven or Mendelssohn that waltzed its way through the hall and out onto the streets of the Akasaka district. It was Koichi Sugiyama’s overture for Dragon Quest, and many more of his melodies arranged for the Tokyo Strings Ensemble, at the Family Classic Concert – the world’s first videogame concert.
Of course, since then there have been thousands of concerts in the same vein. Perhaps you’ve attended some, whether it was the Commodore 64 Concert; Final Fantasy’s Distant Worlds and The Legend Of Zelda’s Symphony Of The Goddesses tours; or the Game Music Festival in London earlier this year, which featured Kristofer Maddigan’s big-band jazz and frantic percussion from Cuphead alongside the soaring strings of Gareth Coker’s score for the Ori games. That many of these are performed by the world’s most prestigious orchestras, such as the Royal Philharmonic and the London Symphony, playing to sold-out crowds, speaks volumes about the growing demand for videogame music in a live setting. So it’s always been surprising that the BBC Proms, an eight-week season of daily orchestral music and long considered
