This orchestra plays the classics, like ‘Rainbow Road’ and the theme from ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’
Philadelphia’s first gamer orchestra has become a gathering place for gamers and former band kids looking for community.
The back of the community room at Ridge Avenue United Methodist Church looked, at first, like any orchestra rehearsal. Instrument cases lined the floor and leaned against the walls: violas, clarinets, trumpets. It was a typical scene, except several cases were covered with stickers hinting at interests outside classical music. “Cats are my friends,” read one. Next to it was a homemade sticker of a bedazzled Game Boy. It was a sign of the music to come.
Toward the front of the room, the musicians and singers took their seats under the fluorescent lights. The violinists lifted their bows. Then the conductor raised his wrist, and the room filled with the unmistakable sound of Mario Kart. The group was rehearsing “Rainbow Road,” the racing game’s signature track. This was the Greater Philadelphia Gamer Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia’s first community orchestra devoted to video game music.
On Saturday at 3 p.m., GPGSO will perform the piece as part of the final concert of its second season, alongside tracks from Donkey Kong, Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy VI, and The Sims. The sold-out performance will mark the end of a whirlwind 11 months for the gamer symphony, which has doubled in size since its first performance in November and now has 75 members.
To co-music director and conductor Gary Clark, GPGSO’s rapid growth makes sense in a city known for niche, DIY music scenes. It hasn’t exactly been a shock to the orchestra’s other organizers either. “I had no doubt in my mind that there was a community for this that was just kind of latent,” said GPGSO president Nicole Benner, a 28-year-old Germantown resident and administrative coordinator at Drexel University.
As cofounder Josh McHugh explained, “There are a lot of nerdy musicians out there.” GPGSO, he said, just gave them a place to gather. But what keeps these self-described “band nerds” and gamers coming to rehearsal every week isn’t the music or the video game nostalgia. It’s the community.
The idea for the orchestra came after McHugh, who lives in Glenside, played in a gamer orchestra at Magfest, a music and gaming convention outside Washington, D.C., a few years ago. “I absolutely fell in love with it,” said the 36-year-old IT analyst. So he started a Discord server to find local musicians who might be interested in building something similar in Philadelphia. Eventually Benner and McHugh’s friend Anne Beeman joined the effort, posting recruitment ads on Instagram, Discord, and Reddit and waiting for word to catch on.
One person who saw those Reddit posts is Rain& Helvia, a 27-year-old tech support analyst from West Philly. She played the viola all through college and was looking for an ensemble to play with again when she came across the post on a niche Philly subreddit. “I felt like I couldn’t ignore it,” said Helvia. “It was too much of a sign of serendipity.”
Barri Shrager had a similar experience. The graphic designer first picked up the flute at 10 and didn’t put it down again until after college, when she no longer had an ensemble to play with. She saw GPGSO as a “perfect opportunity” not only to pick up the flute again but also to meet like-minded people. “I have always been interested in video games, anime, and all that kind of nerd culture stuff,” said the 35-year-old Bryn Mawr resident.
The problem for Shrager, though, was that so many of her interests played out in cyberspace. “The majority of my friends live online,” she said. “I wanted something where I could really connect and forge local bonds.”
GPGSO has given her that IRL community. It’s a community that the viola player and Twitch streamer BlinkBlinkGames described as an “accepting space for people who are into certain niche topics,” such as video games and classical music. “I can talk about either of these things that I love,” she said, “and nobody is going to cock their head and look at me like a weirdo.”
Instead, they are more likely to nod along — if not in agreement, then to the beat of a song someone in the orchestra has transformed from short, looping, synthesized theme music into a full orchestral arrangement. Like the 10-second, 16-bit ditty from Sonic the Hedgehog that the tuba player Matthew Killian stretched into a bombastic, two-minute piece, complete with a saxophone solo.
The core of the song is the same; its melody instantly recognizable to the ’90s kids who grew up playing the game. But the added layers of strings and horns make the old tune feel bigger and more dramatic than it did when it came through the family TV speakers. Suddenly, you’re back in your basement, beating Dr. Eggman again. That’s what makes video game music such a joy to play for Blink. “There are so many intrinsic memories that are tied to this music,” she said. “So you feel very powerful and happy when you play it.”
She is even happier, she added, when she plays with other people who have their own memories of the same music and grew up loving the same games. The shared frame of reference turns small exchanges during rehearsal into inside jokes, like when the conductor tells the woodwinds they nailed their solo and the trombonist across the room celebrates with Mario’s high-pitched “woo-hoo.”
In most rooms, Blink said, the joke would land with a thud. Here, the whole orchestra laughs. Then everyone turns back to the music. “It’s such a good feeling,” she said.