Just went to my first ever Distant Worlds Final Fantasy concert last night in Montreal. Last time they were here was 2017 and I couldn't go cause tickets were sold out incredibly fast. Arnie Roth... funny i've been watching these concerts on youtube awhile now and it was finally great to meet him. It was a absolutely spectacular orchestra and scenes from the games coupled with the music nearly made me tear up. Arnie Roth was really excited about the remake and said he even heard many of the new versions of FF VII songs and said they sound really spectacular. I hope he's right... I can't wait to hear all of them. He also said he was so excited about the remake orchestra tour and that not even Coronavirus will stop him. He's a really cool guy in general.
Anyway, I had insane pleasure to be there... like I can't even believe how perfect it was for me. I would go again but sadly it seems that I might wait a lifetime for another one. I told myself I had to go... I just had to or I'll probably miss out forever especially with travel scares now and coronavirus. If anybody is thinking of going to one of these concerts.... just dont think about it and GO. I was absolutely blown away by the quality of it and Arnie Roth has shown he is such a fantastic conductor and his personality works. You can really tell he is a fan of the series and enjoys his work with Distant Worlds. Now that I have experienced Distant Worlds for the first time ever.... live I'm deeply saddened that my location is not on the list for this official remake orchestra tour BUT it makes me so glad I went. Tickets are really expensive though. I paid about 86 bucks for mine over here and VIP tickets were going for like 140 dollars. Insane stuff. Yoko Shimomura was supposed to be here tonight apparently but she couldn't come because of Coronavirus scares in Japan. I fully understand what she's going through over there but at least we had a really nice message from her on the projector saying how sad she was to not be here. From what I read she was supposed to be performing for Apocalypsis Noctis from XV. The orchestra still played it, however.
Couple of highlights from the concert: To Zanarkand is going to be in every distant worlds concert as a staple because Nobuo requested it himself according to Roth. It actually doesn't surprise me since it did get #1 in the recent huge Japanese poll. The concert was absolutely fantastic, imo and it made me even appreciate some tracks from FF games I don't really enjoy that much such as FF III and FF V. They played Searching for friends from FFVI and I nearly teared up and it was followed by the Oath from FF VIII. We even had Vam'alla Flamenco from IX which was just so amazing! They even played one song from Final Fantasy III Zephyr memories (Eternal Wind) which honestly I dont even like FF III so I was shocked how much I liked that song in concert. I shed a tear when they played searching for friends from FFVI and also Oath from FF VIII for some reason. I just felt like they were extremely powerful in concert... especially VI's. For FFV they had Gilgamesh theme and Dear Friends. Gilgamesh was followed by Seymour's battle theme and then FF VII's battle theme to end the show. They also played Heavensward from XIV... so I'm glad XIV got the respect it deserves! After the interlude, the 2nd part of the show was entirely FF VII. This probably had the most amazing version of One Winged Angel I have ever heard. It sounds so different in concert... like wow. Main theme of FF VII, Aerith's theme, Cosmo Canyon, Jenova, Jenova complete were also all played. It was a very good concert! Aerith's theme was so powerful for example. They even played the chocobo FF VII version. I can only imagine how amazing the remake tour will be and I'm basing this off a single experience with Distant Worlds! You guys are lucky.
But anyhow sorry for the long post but you can just imagine how excited I was seeing my first official FF concert and it was really near me too. Usually they always play far away from me like Europe where i'm originally from, Americas, and Asia So it was just a huge surprise to see it was actually happening here at a time I can actually go and where tickets were not sold out.
I also checked out the whole album and i'm sad i'll probably never get to hear the rest live. But I now understand how popular these concerts are. Every youtube video I watched always had places full and tonight was full ... it made me really happy that people like Final Fantasy here. The only thing that would have made it perfect was if Susan Calloway was here performing Dragonsong from FF XIV and if Nobuo Uematsu was here tonight with Shimomura.