NORWALK — Most people know the classic composers — Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. Others may enjoy the cinematic themes of John Williams. The Norwalk Gamer Symphony Orchestra aims to move music listeners beyond the classics and into the video gaming realm.
The audition-free community orchestra specializes in playing orchestrated arrangements of music from video games. They play everything from Nintendo’s Super Mario and Zelda series to role-playing games like the Final Fantasy series as well as multi-player online games like MapleStory.
The group is in rehearsals for their first public performance (aside from few virtual concerts) since before the pandemic. They are committed to play at the RetroWorld Expo at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford on Aug. 27, and at the Multiverse Expo in Bethel on Sept. 18.
“It’s this collective shared experience,” Rachel DeMaida, the vice president of the Norwalk GSO, said about hearing the music as well as playing it. “It transforms a solitary experience into a way to connect with other people.”
The response from audiences differs when they hear the orchestra for the first time, according to DeMaida, the vice president of the Norwalk GSO. Non-gamers are surprised by melodic quality of the music while others who grew up playing video games like to share how the music made them feel during that scene in the game.
“A lot of people say they didn’t know video game music could sound like that,” said Rachel DeMaida, the vice president of the Norwalk GSO. “For some people, they’re thinking of the 8-bit games with the beeps and boops. They don’t realize that you can take that 8-bit music and turn it into a full symphonic experience.”
DeMaida joined the orchestra in 2017, about a year after it started. Living in Waterbury, she first read about the group on a Connecticut online forum. She searched online to find out more, but little information about the group existed at that time. She took a chance and drove to Norwalk to find out more.
“It seemed suspicious. I told my partner, ‘If I don’t call you, something has gone horribly wrong.’ It ended up being great, and I’ve been with them ever since,” said DeMaida, who plays instruments in the flute family, the alto and tenor saxophone, the violin and the harp.
Growing up, DeMaida scoured the internet trying to find sheet music from her favorite PlayStation game, Final Fantasy XII, to play on her concert flute. In 1998, her options were extremely limited, but she managed to stumble upon one website that had the theme for her favorite character, Aerith Gainsborough.
“It’s the only thing I would play for two months. I drove my parents crazy,” DeMaida said. “But when I went through high school, you have to focus on the more serious music. After high school, I stopped playing music … Once I saw this Reddit post, I thought, ‘Wait a second, you can play that now?’ It’s pretty cool.”
The Norwalk Gamer Symphony Orchestra invites musicians of all abilities to join. The group rehearses about two to three times a month although they’re trying to make it at least once a week. Rehearsals are open to the public. The next rehearsal is scheduled for from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the American Legion Post 12 in Norwalk.
“Our experience is all over the place. We don’t want to exclude people if we can avoid it,” DeMaida said. “If you can make it sound good, you can play. Hobbyist to professional to student and everyone in between.”
emily.morgan@hearstmediact.com
