"It's the perfect meeting of the worlds. It's analog meets digital. It's nature and technology. It's tradition and future."
Videogame
composer and world-record holder Tommy Tallarico was talking about a
new album he's working on with EDM artist and pioneer BT.
We were sitting in the middle of an empty recording studio at Skywalker Sound
and talking about this new cross-genre album - it's called Electronic
Opus, by the way - but to someone just walking in who knows Tallarico's
resume, the conversation could've easily been mistaken for Tallarico
describing himself.
After spending some time with Tallarico, who's
spent the last decade of his life working on his Video Games Live (VGL)
concert series, which takes world-class orchestras from all over the
world and has them perform the most widely recognized videogame tunes,
and BT - an icon in his own right - the two seem like the perfect pair
for the project.
Two worlds collide
Electronic Opus is a
complete re-imagining of BT's most well-recognized songs from the past
20 years, performed with a live orchestra. It started as a kickstarter
project in November 2014, and raised $250,000 (about £162,000,
AU$320,000) in just over two weeks.
"Typically for a Kickstarter
project the average pledge is around $40-$50. BT's was $120. That was
the average [pledge]," Tallarico says. The money they collected is going to two places: the record and a live concert set to take place in Miami, Florida on March 29.
This orchestral-meets-electronic mash-up show, believe it or not, will be number 321 for Tallarico.
"I
actually own two world records. One is for the person who has worked on
the most videogames in their lifetime - not just the music - but the
most ever. [I've done] over 300. And the second world record is for the
person who has performed the most symphony shows of the same show. We've
done over 320 shows of the same traveling, touring symphony show. No
one's ever done that."
Tallarico describes Electronic Opus as
being in the same vein as VGL. It's a symphony for everybody he says,
"not just rich, old white people."
Combining dance, electronic,
pop and trance music - what you'd find in BT's repertoire - with a live
symphony and thousands of dollars of electronics and special effects,
the two have created a show that takes the whole performance, not just
the music, to new heights.
"The incredible thing is that the
visuals we're doing, from a technology standpoint, has never, ever been
done before. Especially with a symphony."
Electronic Opus is Tallarico's latest project, and certainly one of his most involved, but his roots are in games.
Twenty
years and over 300 games later, his career shows no signs of slowing
down. Check out the interview below for his take on the games, the music
and his ideology on breaking into an always-evolving industry: TechRadar: What was it like creating Video Games Live? Tommy Tallarico:
Everybody thought I was crazy. They told me, "Look, people that listen
to music and symphonies don't play videogames. And people who play
videogames don't go to the symphony, so you're like totally screwed. No
one's going to show up." But I took a risk. I put everything I had into
it from my whole videogame career. I believed in it. They said, "At the
Hollywood Bowl you'll be lucky if 500 people show up." Eleven thousand
people showed up for that first show and all of sudden I wasn't so crazy
anymore.
It's been incredible. We were on the cover of Symphony
Magazine last year where they were saying that Video Games Live has
helped to save symphonies around the world because we're out there
ushering in a new generation of people.
