Canberra cellist Chris Pidcock is gearing up for rePLAY – a production bringing to life the thrilling video game universe through a concert of musical scores from the best-loved video games. He took five minutes out of rehearsals to tell us about it.
What’s your favourite piece in the show? We’re playing music from a range of video games including Portal, Journey, The Legend of Zelda, The Elder Scrolls, Halo and Final Fantasy. It’s all great music full of energy. We played an entire concert of music from The Legend of Zelda last year and the most exciting part for me was hearing the old 8-bit digital soundtrack of the game transformed into a symphony played by a full orchestra. It’s a masterpiece.
What were your favourite childhood video games? My parents took us to Europe when I was six and they gave us all Gameboys for the journey. I ended up too distracted by the pinball on my Gameboy to notice anything cultural like the Mona Lisa! I remember there was also a game called Metroid – I used to always try to win the game just so I could hear the incredible winning music.
What video games do you play now? My flatmate just bought an Xbox so we’re playing a lot of Forza 5 at the moment.
What do you think will be a highlight for the audience? The audience will definitely get an appreciation for the power of an orchestra! If you’ve grown up playing games like Zelda, Halo and Portal, I think you will be blown away with how great the music sounds played live by the SSO. People in the audience will be dressed up as characters from their favourite games – it will be an overwhelming experience!
What’s next for the SSO? We play different concerts every week, but one I’m really excited about is our Strictly Luhrmann concert on Friday May 2 and Saturday May 3 where we will be playing music from Baz Luhrmann’s movies. After the Friday show we’ll be doing our new Night Lounge in the Northern Foyer of the Opera House with a DJ, percussion group and other SSO acts. It should be a lot of fun and a great chance to mingle with the players in the orchestra.
rePLAY World Premiere is onFriday March 7 and Saturday March 8 at theSydney Opera House Concert Hall.
