It’s been a week since I caught Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy. Old news I know, but I’d be doing a great injustice if I fail to blog about it. (Alert: if you’re not a gaming freak, please skip this post or you’ll be bored to death. And Justin Chan, this one’s especially for you! I almost brought your photo into concert hall to represent your presence but I figured that’d be too morbid…)

As all FF fans know, all tickets were snapped up within the first three hours of public sales! But His favour’s upon the people who love him (and who signed up as Singapore Arts Festival members). And I have to say, the whole experience was worth every cent of the tickets!

I’d attended several orchestra performances in Esplanade before, but never one so fun! My equally-fanatic sister (together we completed FFX in 10 days, beat that!) wrote an elaborate and overzealous post which you can read if you’re die-hard fans like us…

 

Look how excited we are!

concert hall during intermission

 

When I examined the songlist during intermission, I realised one glaring mistake: there was no Sephiroth’s Theme aka One-Winged Angel. I thought, how could this be, they must be saving it for encore! I savoured all the other pieces till the end. When the concert’s done, everybody’s shouting encore. And so  the conductor came back and did the encore song…… FFVI Terra’s Theme.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo………………………………………

I. almost. fainted.

Under normal circumstances, I’d enjoy Terra’s Theme. But the problem is, HOW COULD THEY LEAVE OUT SEPHIROTH aka One-Winged Angel?!? It’s a sacrilege!! Anyway, the encore ended, the conductor went off, and there was mayhem in the hall. Everyone was shouting for encore again, yours truly being the loudest in the entire Circle 2, much to the shame of my poor friend sitting beside me. I was also sure that if they didn’t do One-Winged Angel, someone might just start torching Esplanade…

So the conductor appeared once again – this time with Maestro Nobuo Uematsu himself!! The crowd totally went berserk! This little Japanese uncle who composed everything from the gentlest To Zanarkand to the grandest Liberi Fatali was such an eccentric character. Like he took out his crocs to clap with them. Anyway, after a little bantering, the conductor finally said, Nobuo Sensei wanted to join in one last song. And he began to sing – veni, veni, venias…

The whole hall exploded with rapturous screaming (me still being the loudest in the entire Circle 2). And at long last, as the finale, they did the most awesomest Sephiroth’s Theme aka One-Winged Angel.

At the end of the night, I went home with a hoarse voice and a huge, huge grin…

 

Nobuo Uematsu in pink shirt and black crocs

 

By the way, during post-show dialogue, I was very tempted to ask Nobuo Sensei out for supper. But was too chicken to do so, stoopid me! If I ever get to see him again, I would live with no regret…