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A Night in Fantasia 2007: Symphonic Games Edition will take place at Sydney Town Hall on Friday, April 20 and Saturday, April 21. Following this, Melbourne's performance will be held in Hamer Hall on Friday, April 27. Attending the Sydney shows will be Chrono Cross's Yasunori Mitsuda, who last year held Australian audiences captivated by performing the bouzouki, an Irish guitar featured in Celtic music. Hitoshi Sakimoto of Final Fantasy XII has been working closely with the Eminence Orchestra on an anime project detailed below, and will be attending all three events, as will Kingdom Hearts composer Yoko Shimomura.

Personally I am very interested in hearing more work from Junichi Nakatsuru and Masaru Shiina, both of which are from Bandai Namco. Masaru Shiina in particular is a fairly new composer, whose work is of great interest to me as his involvement in both Tekken and the Tales of... series is quite significant.

Kow Otani's work from Shadow of the Colossus has been widely celebrated for the sheer epic nature of the score. His work for the anime series Haibane Renmei is of fantastic quality and beautiful string arrangements. Hamaguchi's orchestral arrangements for many Final Fantasy pieces are very well done, and are of core importance to a video game and anime orchestra.

The concert will feature music from the Kingdom Hearts series, the Metal Gear Solid series, the Final Fantasy series, Super Mario Bros., the Legend of Zelda series, World of Warcraft, Chrono Cross and Shadow of the Colossus, and more. The concert also boasts a few premieres of which Australia will again play host to, carrying on from the world premiere of music from World of Warcraft in 2005, and the premiere of music from Final Fantasy XII (not counting the theme) last year.

The Eminence Orchestra has recently recorded tracks of the symphonic score for the anime project Romeo X Juliet, with music by Hitoshi Sakimoto. Studio Gonzo, the development house involved, is adapting the Shakespeare play set in Verona to a floating continent, the Aeropolis of Neo Verona, where princes, knights and winged horses make their home. The game and anime-inspired orchestral group has completed work recording the soundtrack at Fox Studios, Sydney. To see them live, tickets are available at Kinokuniya and Ticketmaster.

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