Symphonic Odysseys: Tribute to Nobuo Uematsu was a symphonic tribute concert first held in Cologne, Germany on July 9, 2011 at the Cologne Philharmonic Hall. The concert exclusively paid homage to the work of Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu and featured music selected from his works as a video game music composer. Among the games featured were Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Last Story, King's Knight, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy Legend, and selected works from the Final Fantasy series. The concert was produced and directed by Thomas Böcker, with arrangements provided by Finnish composer and musician Jonne Valtonen, along with Roger Wanamo, Masashi Hamauzu, and Jani Laaksonen. The concert was performed by the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln and the WDR Radio Choir Cologne under conduction from Arnie Roth, with guest performers Benyamin Nuss and Juraj Čižmarovič joining the orchestra. A video recording of Symphonic Odysseys was streamed live online. The concert was initially scheduled for a single performance, but after selling out within twelve hours a second concert was added prior in the same day in Cologne. This too sold out, resulting in a total attendance of over 4000.
In June 2017, the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Chorus performed Symphonic Odysseys under the baton of Eckehard Stier, with guest performer Mischa Cheung. The first concert took place on 18 June at the Philharmonie de Paris in Paris, France, the second on 20 June at the Barbican Centre in London, United Kingdom. Same as in Cologne years before, Nobuo Uematsu was present at both events as guest of honour.
A recording of the concerts in Cologne was published as a two-disc album on December 28, 2011 by Dog Ear Records, Uematsu's own record label. The albums, along with the concerts themselves, received varied reviews, with some critics giving enthusiastic praise, especially in regards to the quality of the performance, the choice of source material, and the quality of the arrangements, while one critic greatly disliked several of the arrangements.
Concert
Production
Thomas Böcker and then WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne director Winfried Fechner began collaborating on orchestrated video game concerts in 2007, after Fechner had attended the Fifth Symphonic Game Music Concert held in Leipzig. As their ideas and plans materialized, three projects were set in motion to determine the interest of a younger audience in classical music performance and the aptitude of the WDR orchestra in focusing on a new source of compositions. The first project was PROMS: That's Sound, That's Rhythm, held in early 2008, featuring a mixture of classical works and video game music, ranging from works by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Morton Gould as well as arrangements of music from video games such as Shenmue and Castlevania previously featured in the Symphonic Game Music Concerts. The second project, held in August 2008, was a composer-specific concert titled Symphonic Shades – Hülsbeck in Concert, focusing entirely on the works of German video game composer Chris Hülsbeck, while the third project was a concert of music from the video games by Square Enix titled Symphonic Fantasies: Music from Square Enix, held in September 2009. A third "Symphonic" concert, Symphonic Legends – Music from Nintendo, was then held in September 2010, and afterwards Böcker decided to have one final production to close out the "Symphonic" series.