Wing Commander Performed by Another Swedish Orchestra (February 12, 2019)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Wing Commander has once again appeared live in concert! This time the WC1 music was performed by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra at the February 9 Joystick 11.0 convention (translated). Did anyone happen to make it there in person? We haven't found a first hand account yet, but it could have sounded like the video below from the graduation ceremonies of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Crazy enough, these two instances weren't the only Swedish orchestra to play Wing Commander in the last few years. Sweden's apparently the place to be if you want to hear live classical WC tunes!

Welcome to the eleventh edition of Joystick, Malmö Symphony Orchestra's annual music music concert!

Experience a magical evening filled with powerful, imaginative music from the world of computer and video games. Today, the genre is well-established and is found in many orchestras repertoires worldwide. Joystick is one of our most visited events and appeals to both young and old gamblers and music enthusiasts. Production is a collaboration with Underscore Production AB.

PROGRAM
Bloodborne - Suite (Ryan Amon)
Final Fantasy VII - Main Theme (Nobuo Uematsu)
Final Fantasy IX - Suite (Nobuo Uematsu)
Conan Exiles - Main Theme (Knut Avenstroup Haugen)
Battlefield One - Flight of the Pigeon / Classic Theme (Johan Söderqvist / Patrik Andrén)
Horizon Zero Dawn - Suite (Joris De Man)
- break -
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture - Finding the Pattern (Jessica Curry)
Hitman 2 - Main Theme (Jesper Kyd)
Commodore Amiga - Medley (Various)
Wing Commander - Suite (Alistair Sanger / David Govett)
Shadow of the Colossus - Suite (Kow Otani)
The Last Guardian - Suite (Takeshi Furukawa)
The Witcher 3 Blood & Wine - Lullaby of Woe (Marcin Przyblowicz)
* Joiner, Melville, Land, Goldstein, Gesqua, Hubbard, Hülsbeck


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Original update published on February 12, 2019
 
Done by the same production company that organised 'we come in peace', that played in Göteborg a few years ago. During the second week of january I was at another concert organised by Orvar ( Sagas - a fantasy film music concert) and they mentioned Joystick 11.0 but I didn't think too much of it as it was quite far away (kinda regret that now), they have another concert soon 3rd march in Linköping with another film music concert - http://www.liso.nu/liso_heroes.htm
 
Cool, I don't see Wing Commander in their March 3 concert, right?

The same group has several different concert series. Gooing back several years they have one production of game music called "score" which had the WC suite at one time but hasn't in it's more recent lineups. I had searched to see if they had any recent concerts coming up and never got any hits on if WC would be included because most of the concert listings did not include the full setlist, opting to list only about half the tracks.

EDIT: Hmm I'm not sure if I've missed this concert listing in the past or not, but it seems Joystick is a concert series that has steadily morphed every year... I'm not sure if it only plays in Malmo but this year's was titled Joystick 11.0... The 2014 version was 6.0 and Wing Commander opened the show: http://joystick.mso.se/2014/04/joystick-program/

It looks like Joystick 12 is already planned for February of next year but it's too early to tell if WC will still be in the lineup
 
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Hi everyone!
I had no idea this was a sort of WCN forum mystery going on. Here's the story:

I'm the CEO/producer of Underscore Productions, we create symphony orchestra concerts with game and film music. SCORE and JOYSTICK are strictly game music while WE COME IN PEACE (sci fi), SAGAS (fantasy), THE HORROR (duh) and WE CAN BE HEROES (heroic/adventure/superheroes) include music from film, TV and games in the genre.

We've been doing the game concerts since 2006, with more or less all major orchestras in Scandinavia. So basically, we create full production packages with everything from programming and sheet music to artwork and having a producer there all week. We do music from both current and classic games.

As a very big WC fan I wanted to pay tribute to the game and the music and created a WC suite in 2014. It was put together by me and then orchestrated by Andreas Hedlund.

With the suite I tried to tell the story of the game and a typical mission:
  • Opening (Fanfare)
  • Briefing (Briefing intro/middle/end)
  • Alert/running to ships (Scramble to launch)
  • Space battle with increasing intensity (Regular combat/Intense combat)
  • Victory/Medal ceremony (Fanfare)

It has been performed many time over the past five years. The KTH ceremony performance was a little special. That orchestra is the orchestra of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. They did our WE COME IN PEACE as a regular concert, where Wing Commander was included. The music director then asked us if it would be OK to do Wing Commander for their graduation ceremony. If you look closely, that is actually the Stockholm city hall where the Nobel Prize dinner is every year.

All the best
/Orvar Safstrom - CEO Underscore Productions
 
Hi everyone!
I had no idea this was a sort of WCN forum mystery going on. Here's the story:

I'm the CEO/producer of Underscore Productions, we create symphony orchestra concerts with game and film music. SCORE and JOYSTICK are strictly game music while WE COME IN PEACE (sci fi), SAGAS (fantasy), THE HORROR (duh) and WE CAN BE HEROES (heroic/adventure/superheroes) include music from film, TV and games in the genre.

We've been doing the game concerts since 2006, with more or less all major orchestras in Scandinavia. So basically, we create full production packages with everything from programming and sheet music to artwork and having a producer there all week. We do music from both current and classic games.

As a very big WC fan I wanted to pay tribute to the game and the music and created a WC suite in 2014. It was put together by me and then orchestrated by Andreas Hedlund.

With the suite I tried to tell the story of the game and a typical mission:
  • Opening (Fanfare)
  • Briefing (Briefing intro/middle/end)
  • Alert/running to ships (Scramble to launch)
  • Space battle with increasing intensity (Regular combat/Intense combat)
  • Victory/Medal ceremony (Fanfare)
It has been performed many time over the past five years. The KTH ceremony performance was a little special. That orchestra is the orchestra of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. They did our WE COME IN PEACE as a regular concert, where Wing Commander was included. The music director then asked us if it would be OK to do Wing Commander for their graduation ceremony. If you look closely, that is actually the Stockholm city hall where the Nobel Prize dinner is every year.

All the best
/Orvar Safstrom - CEO Underscore Productions

Welcome to our little corner of the internet! Thanks for the info, that clears up a lot of questions we've had. I love that fans all over the world are keeping Wing Commander alive in so many unique and interesting ways. The WC fandom in my experiece has a variety of talented people from airplane engineers to Nasa robot maker, and game devs and more and they all contribute in their own ways.

I'd love to be able to attend one of these concerts in person but that's not practical in the short term for me. Any chance on getting a proper recording of the suite on line? Has there been interest in playing the suite from orchestras and productions outside of Scandinavia?
 
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