Alix, Jan, Hilary and I all went to the Final Fantasy concert on Saturday night!

Here's all the lurid details. :D
FFFF the San Francisco symphony is pretty darn good. I noticed several mistakes they made, though, like when they weren't quite together, or when someone's note didn't quite come out. I guess they hadn't really had time to polish the music very much. They were still amazing. We got seats very close to the orchestra, so I could see at least the string section very clearly. There were some lovely viola solos.
What still really bothered me is that the orchestra (especially the string section and with the exception of the piano) was constantly dragging behind the conductor. It really messed with my mind, because I thought our job was to try to follow the conductor exactly.

WELL anyway, about what they played:
I enjoyed most of the arrangements, especially Vamo Alla Flamenco (SOOO GOOD!) Some of them were stale to me, like Don't Be Afraid and One Winged Angel, because they sounded EXACTLY like recordings I have. I guess it can't be helped when the conductor is the same and he wants the orchestra to play it the exact same way, but I had hoped that it would sound a little different because it was live. I was a little disappointed.
Terra's theme was beautiful, as was To Zanarkand. Delicious woodwind solos as well as atmospheric stringy bits with piano and harp.
Man With a Machine Gun was something new apparently, but I wasn't pleased with the arrangement and thought it sounded better as a techno song. Also the bowing for the strings looked really hard XD
Swing de Chocobo was great fun
The video they showed for Aerith's theme managed to be SPOILER FREE. I was impressed.

BUT THE BEST
was definitely the opera scene from ff6! I was seriously squeeing the whole way through--it was just so awesome that they did that. I think it worked very well as a scene and I wish they had done more! The singers were great <3 (it would have been mega-awesome if Setzer came and abducted one of them half-way through, but that's a spoiler, I guess)

AND THE WORST
was the giant screen playing movies the whole time. It really detracted from the experience of seeing the SF Symphony and I felt like it insinuated that gamers had really short attention spans. It also made people laugh and clap at inopportune moments, which is kind of weird when you go to the symphony. Not to mention it's also kind of a faux pas, depending. It also distracted some of the musicians--I kept seeing people turn around to look at it while they were playing.

Gotta go! Yesterday's art party was fun and productive for me :D