Dr. Leung's visit was a major event in my year of research about this kind of music. I was really glad to see how much enthusiasm some of the piano majors had regarding this material. Even the faculty seemed pretty supportive of it as well. Most of all, I was just glad to make an School that in many ways is slow to update repertoire outside of the traditional canons and acknowledge career paths beyond the traditional "super star performer" face up to someone who has had success in another way. Although it definitely made a difference in the present culture, I think and hope it has the ability to make a difference down the road— that students and scholars who come after will be able to look back and say: "hey, this guy X years ago had a piano studio that played all video game music, so why can't I do Y?"
I'm sure some of my colleagues think I don't belong in this space, doing this research or teaching, and/or that the repertoire is not worthy of attention and focus. But I'm really learning this year just how much of a community this music creates. One of my favorite take away's from the week was when one of my students greeted Martin at the start of his lesson by explaining that finding Martin's YouTube channel over a decade ago also led him to a community of music lovers who were passionate about video games and video game music. One of the things I've learned in all my years of work in game audio is that gamers have a "coming out" process— many people play games, but they don't talk about it often. However, because of my work, people DO talk to me about their interest in gaming and what they're playing. I'm always glad when anyone can express him/here self more, and it was an emotional experience to see one of my students explain that he'd found inspiration from Martin and his playing video game music for years. Wow!
Lastly, I'll leave with a comment about the recital Martin played. (If you're interested in any of his arrangements, you can find them for free for a limited time on the sheet music portion of his website.) As you can see from the above picture, the recital was well attended by all sorts of students and even guests who had driven a long way to get to Ann Arbor to hear him. I really enjoyed the event and was delighted to play some duets with Martin at the end of the program. Turns out these are the first video game music duets that he's ever performed! I put these duets up on my videogamemusicnerd YouTube channel, but I'll share my favorite of these duets here. I absolutely loved playing Super Mario Galaxy, and also the reference to Super Mario Bros 3, in the middle of this duet. Despite the fact that we probably had only about 45 minutes to rehearse, these duets really came together. In fact, one of my students wrote a reaction to the recital, commenting: "The duets were incredible— really in sync— you seem to play off each other well." I think that playing piano duets is one of the hardest things to really have exactly together because of the percussive nature of the instrument, but we did it!
I think that Martin will eventually post the whole recital and I'll link to it here once he does. For now, you can see the other two on my channel if you like. Including some antics jumping around during Mario Kart Double Dash: Baby Park. About this duet, one of my students wrote: “BLUE SHELL! DUCK AND COVER!— that sort of thing is something you simply can’t get at a normal concert/recital. Part of why I love video games so much; in the end, it’s about fun.”
Overall, a tremendously busy week, but also an important one in my research that I'm still digesting. Have you heard Martin play video game music? Did he inspire you and help you find a sense of community? I'd love to hear about it, if so.
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