CoN 25th Anniversary: 1997-2022
Distant Worlds concert

Posted: 19th June 2009 05:17

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I don't know if anyone else has been able to see Arnie Roth conducting Uematsu's masterpieces, but I just back from a show not too long ago and it was absolutely amazing. Hearing his music how it was always intended to be heard was absolutely amazing. I haven't played a Final Fantasy since 9, but I was still able to appreciate the music from 10-12 that was played. If you ever have a chance to go see this show, its well worth it!

Our show was very special; we were gifted with the world premiere of Man with the Machine Gun (which was AWESOME!) and Kiss Me Goodbye from Final Fantasy 12 was last performed three years ago and hadn't been played in concert since. Unfortunately, some how time was running short and he had to cut Swing De Chocobo (no biggie) and FF6 - Terra. No love lost though.

The Setlist (I can't remember it in particular order, for the most part):
Liberi Fatali - FF8
Don't Be Afraid - FF9
To Zanarkand - FF10
Ronfaure - FF11
Theme of Love - FF4
Dear Friends - FF5
Vamo' alla Flamenco - FF9
Medley - FF1-3

Intermission

Opening - Bombing Mission - FF7
Distant Worlds - FF11
Kiss Me Goodbye - FF12
Man With the Machine Gun - FF8
Opera "Maria and Draco" - FF6
One Winged Angel - FF7

The conductor, Arnie Roth, had said to keep your eyes peeled for another concert tour in December. So if you weren't able to attend this round of touring, keep your eyes peeled!

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Posted: 21st June 2009 23:37

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I've actually really wanted to go to this concert! So this is great news!

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Posted: 22nd June 2009 11:21

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Agreed, I'd like to see tour dates as soon as they come out. They've got a pretty good song selection, and I've always wanted to see Nobuo Uematsu's music live, but that hasn't really been an option.

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Posted: 22nd June 2009 19:25

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As far as I know, they were just in Dallas this past weekend.

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Posted: 27th April 2015 18:36

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Bumping this old-timey thread now that I've finally been to a Distant Worlds show, having gone to last Friday night's show in Boston with my wife. I'm sure if anyone is reading this, they're probably most interested in the setlist, so here's that for you:
user posted image
(note that the setlist, as is pretty typical does not include the encore - however, Arnie Roth spoiled that encore more than once as he got lost in the program)

It was mostly a quality show, and it might seem obvious to say it, but I definitely enjoyed it. To get the more negative pieces out of the way, though, I have to say that the production was a little bit disjointed. There were a couple times where Arnie Roth seemed to not know what the program said he was doing next, particularly toward the end, and he wasn't able to cover it very gracefully. He also seemed to not be fully in sync with his orchestra, which doesn't completely surprise me as it was a student orchestra this time around and not a professional one like usual. I also thought that the visuals were too repetitive in many cases, with the same videos being used for multiple songs or more than once within a song - I didn't realize going in that Distant Worlds is not a real part of Squenix but is instead an independent company that licenses everything from the mothership, though, and that explains some of why some tracks never seem to get arranged, and why the video they get is so limited, etc.

As for highlights, well, there certainly more than a few. The first thing that really blew me away was when they dipped into Fabula Nova Crystallis and then transitioned seamlessly into Blinded By Light. Both of those songs are among my favorites across the breadth of the series, and live and together they were spectacular. Swing de Chocobo was a nice choice to cover the chocobo theme, as well, and the visuals to accompany were pretty well done, with clips of chocobos from most every game punctuated by an appearance from Sazh and Dahj's chocobo chick as the theme first kicked in.

During the intermission, I tried to take some time to explain to my wife exactly what was going on. She's not a gamer, let alone a FF gamer, so that was a very uphill trek. It caused her to ask me for the first time how I fit in with the people we saw around us, and my best answer was, "um... maybe a third of them have probably visited the site before?" It was not convincing. Additionally, her experience with symphonic music was obviously more typical - so I warned her ahead of time, "yes, we'll be pretty dressed up, but you are very likely to see some folks in full costume, as well." We only saw one. Unfortunately for my sake, it was Chocolina, and a girl wearing very little but strategically-placed feathers and proto-wings is not the easiest thing to explain to a woman in her thirties who has virtually never played a video game. smile.gif

In the second half, I thought that the orchestra did a lovely version of Roses of May and followed it soon after with another lovely version of the Final Fantasy IV Theme of Love. Sandwiched between was a track from XIV that I had no real way of knowing, but I quite enjoyed. Zanarkand was also immensely well done, to the point where I actually felt like I understood why so many people are so crazy about it. Playing of the Main Theme at the end actually made me a little misty; it's always been a beautiful melody to me but something about hearing it played like that made it feel very special. Special enough, in fact, that I wish they hadn't even done the encore, which was One Winged Angel. I get that it's a crowd favorite - they even asked the crowd to chant the three beats of SEP-HI-ROTH along with the choir - but for me, it was just such an obvious and overdone thing that I would have been just as happy to leave before the encore at all.

I'd definitely go again, to end this on another pretty obvious note.


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Posted: 4th May 2015 09:19

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Overdone as it might be, One Winged Angel is still magnificient, even if it's the obvious choice for an encore.

I went to Distant Worlds on January 13th, 2013 in Paris, and man did we get a run for ou money!
Here's the setlist at the time :

Prelude (Final Fantasy Series)
Liberi Fatali (Final Fantasy VIII)
To Zanarkand (Final Fantasy X)
Don't Be Afraid (Final Fantasy VIII)
Memoro de la Stono ~ Distant Worlds (Final Fantasy XI)
J-E-N-O-V-A (Final Fantasy VII)
You're Not Alone (Final Fantasy IX)
Blinded By Light (Final Fantasy XIII)
Eyes On Me (Final Fantasy VIII)
Chocobo Medley 2012 (Final Fantasy Series)


Opening - Bombing Mission (Final Fantasy VII)
Dark World (Final Fantasy VI)
Fisherman's Horizon (Final Fantasy VIII)
The Man with the Machine Gun (Final Fantasy VIII)
Aerith's Theme (Final Fantasy VII)
Suteki Da Ne (Final Fantasy X)
Battle With The Four Fiends (Final Fantasy IV)
Battle Medley (part 1) : Battle at the Big Bridge (Final Fantasy V)
Battle Medley (part 2) : Fight with Seymour (Final Fantasy X)
Battle Medley (part 3) : Let the Battle Begin ! (Final Fantasy VII)
Battle Medley (part 4) : Victory Theme (Final Fantasy Series)
Terra (Final Fantasy VI)
Encore:
One-Winged Angel (Final Fantasy VII)

Pieces were mainly from FF7 and FF8, these two composing more than half of the total number of tracks, which some of the fans present found irritating (it was a fullhouse, of course, with even people sitting on stairs!). I didn't mind much : I might hate FF8 with a fury, the score is its only redeeming quality. I would however had liked hearing some tracks from FF9...

My girlfriend was here as well, so I spent some time explaining the context and everything. She did recognize FF7 on screen, but she couldn't understand some of my reactions, so took the intermission to explain her a couple of stuff, including why everyone in the audience was screaming and clapping when seeing the little guy named Uematsu in the audience. She was however having a lot of fun watching the cosplayer, including a guy dressed as Cloud, with a very nicely done Buster Sword to boot.

So, some people might have noticed 2 bolded tracks up here : they have in common the participation of Nobuo Uematsu himself, at the request of Arnie North! The only condition from Uematsu was for North to play as well at the same time, so he picks up a violin, while Uematsu sits behind the piano to play FF6's Dark World theme... Man that was good, a proper moment in time, with childhood memories rushing back...

Uematsu came back for the Encore, to join the choir for One-Winged-Angel. We had the good fortune after the show to pass by the artists' entrance while the band was leaving, some of them were still extatic with what happened to them, being big fans that had the chance to sing just next to the composer himself...

Overall, it was a great experience, one I think a music fan should definitely do.
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Posted: 1st April 2017 14:42

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I went to my second DW last night, the first time the show has come to New Orleans. It was another quality show, but sadly not as different as I would have hoped from two years ago. Unfortunately, the 30th Anniversary program doesn't start until July, so those lucky people will be the ones to get a fresh program. Arnie Roth seemed mildly embarrassed every time he had to preface a song by saying "this is the 25th Anniversary medley of..." or something similar; I think he's ready to be able to roll out some new stuff.

Here's the setlist they played:
  • Prelude
  • Liberi Fatali (FF8)
  • Victory Fanfare
  • Character Medley (Terra, Kefka, Celes, Locke)
  • Theme of Love (FF4)
  • Torn from the Heavens (FF14)
  • Roses of May (FF9)
  • Cosmo Canyon (FF7)
  • 25th Anniversary Chocobo Medley (this seemed different than the last time I heard it - more geared towards FF13 than I remembered)

Intermission
  • Opening - Bombing Mission (FF7)
  • Apocalyptis Noctis (FF15)
  • Balamb Garden - Ami(FF8)
  • Ronfaure (FF11)
  • You're Not Alone (FF9)
  • Zanarkand (FF10)
  • Man with the Machine Gun (FF8)
  • 25th Anniversary Battle Medley
  • Main Theme (FF1)

Encore: One Winged Angel (FF7)

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Posted: 4th December 2019 19:51

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I didn't think anyone would want this as a brand new newspost, but the fifth album of Distant Worlds recordings just came out last month. If anyone is interested in buying it, here's an AmaCoN link: https://amzn.to/33RrYmm

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?
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Posted: 15th July 2020 19:27

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Quote (Rangers51 @ 4th December 2019 14:51)
I didn't think anyone would want this as a brand new newspost, but the fifth album of Distant Worlds recordings just came out last month. If anyone is interested in buying it, here's an AmaCoN link: https://amzn.to/33RrYmm

All the distant world tracks are now on Apple Music. I am loving them I hope they come back to Chicago one day

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