video-games-live posts

Civilization IV received a great honor on Sunday night. The turn-based strategy game became the first game ever to have part of its music win a Grammy Award. The theme song for the game, Baba Yetu by composer Christopher Tin, won in the "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists" category.

While the music track was composed first for the game it has since become a live concert favorite including showing up in the concerts for the traveling video game music show Video Games Live. Tin actually won two Grammy Awards on Sunday night; he also won in the Best Classical Crossover Album for his release Calling All Dawns.

The video-PC game music concert series Video Games Live has been touring for several years now around the world. This summer a documentary of the series was shown on various PBS stations in the US. Now Video Games Live is teaming up with Shout Factory to offer that documentary, Video Games Live: Level 2, on DVD and Blu-Ray video.

Filmed in New Orleans earlier this year, the concert DVD/Blu-Ray not only has the concert but also over 3 hours in bonus features. They include "documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, creator commentary, internet game music videos, and a special look inside a private and exclusive game composers party in Tokyo, Japan." Look for the product to be released on October 19.

Last month we reported that the Video Games Live game music concert series would have a 90 minute PBS TV special that would air at various PBS TV stations in August. Now the concert's web site has posted up a schedule of which PBS stations in the US will be airing the special on what dates and times.

Just a reminder: the special will show concert footage of Video Games Live music performances from such games like StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Civilization and others. You can get more info on if your PBS station is broadcasting the special on the official PBS web site.

Earlier this year developer Petroglyph Games finally revealed End of Nations, its near-future themed RTS MMO game for pubisher Trion Worlds. Now comes word that the next Video Games Live music concert will feature the world premiere of the music for the game.

The concert will be held on Saturday July 24 at the San Diego Civic Theater (hey, that's the city where Comic-Con is right now!) with the game's music composer Frank Klepacki taking the stage for the premiere of his music themes. Also the End of Nations "0" issue comic book that was revealed last week will be given out to all attendees of the concert.

The Video Games Live music concert tour has brought game music via a full live orchestra for the past several years to tons of locations all over the world. Now the PBS TV network is planning to broadcast a 90 minute special that will show performances of Video Games Live this summer.

The special will have music from a ton of games including StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Civilization and others. The PBS station for the Bay Area of California, KQED, will show the special first this Monday at 7:30 pm . It will make its nationwide PBS debut on July 31 and will be shown in various PBS stations in August. PBS will also sell a CD and DVD/Blu-Ray of the special starting July 31 and it will be exclusive to them until November 1. You can check out a four minute trailer for the special above this post which has (not kidding) Jamie Lee Curtis talking about World of Warcraft. Who knew?

As they did last year, the traveling video game music concert series Video Games Live plans to hold a concert event in Los Angeles in conjunction with E3 2010. This week it was revealed that the concert will be held on June 17 at 8 pm, just three hours after the exhibit halls close on the annual trade show.

This year's event will be held at the the Nokia Theater, just down the street from E3 2010's location at the Los Angeles Convention Center which should make it easy for E3 attendees to show up. Tickets are on sale now for the event and unlike E3, tickets for Video Games Live can be purchased by the general public.

The traveling video game music concert series Video Games Live has been in operation for several years now with performances of game music with a full live orchestra all over the world. Now Video Games Live has announced that one of its upcoming concerts will be filmed by PBS for a special to be broadcast on that network in June 2010.

The concert will be filmed at the Lakefront Arena in New Orleans on February 5 with tickets for the concert going on sale on Friday. After the special is aired, Video Games Live will offer a DVD and Blu-Ray showing of the event with lots of extra footage and features. It also plans to release a second Video Games Live music CD in 2010 that will have many of the new songs and tracks that have been added to the concert tour in the past two years.

The Video Games Live music concerts tours have been going on for a few years now all over the world but what if you happen to live in a part of the world where there are not any plans to hold such an event? Today Video Games Live announced that they are selling an exclusively branded MP3 player that will hold 10 exclusive live performances of a number of game music from those concerts.

The $50 MP3 player is currently on sale at the Video Games Live web site. The 2 GB player comes with headphones, a USB adapter, support for an internal speaker and a microphone for recording voices. The 10 music tracks have not been released before now and include live recordings of music from games like Halo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Civilization IV and more.

A month ago, the Video Games Live music concert tour announced plans for a special concert on June 4 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. That also happens to be the night of the last day of E3 2009. Now the official E3 site has announced a way for a guy to buy a ticket and get one free for his date.

The special promotion begins today and runs through May 29. The E3 web site has a special promo code that can be used to get a free ticket when one purchased one of the $55 tickets available for sale. This deal is only for the $55 ticket price and we suspect that with this kind of sale they will go quickly.

As the preparations continue for the relaunch of the "big trade show" version of E3 this June, the video-PC game concert series Video Games Live is also planning a return to Los Angeles for a new concert on June 4, the night of the last day of E3.

Video Games Live hasn't performed in the LA area in over two years (the last concert was held in conjunction with the first edition of the now shut down E For All Expo in October 2007). On June 4 the traveling game music concert series will hold its show at the 5,801 seat Greek Theatre. Pre-sale tickets are now available (you have to plug in the password "HALO" to take advantage).

[Via Joystiq]