The Royal Albert Hall and BBC will host the first ever ‘Gaming Prom’ this year
The orchestral concert will feature music from Kingdom Hearts, Shadow of the Colossus and Battlefield 2042
The BBC has announced that it will include video game music as part of its iconic Proms for the first time.
The Proms, which were founded in 1895, are a season of classical music concerts held every summer, mainly at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
This year, of the 72 proms planned between July and September, one of them will be dedicated to video games, the BBC has announced.
Prom 21 will take place on August 1, 2022 and has the title Gaming Prom: From 8-Bit to Infinity.
The Prom will be performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Robert Ames (pictured above), who has previously conducted Proms on ‘Pioneers of Sound’ and sci-fi film music.
Although the full programme has yet to be confirmed, the event will include the European concert premiere of the Battlefield 2042 score.
The pieces confirmed so far are:
- Battlefield 2042 suite (14 mins)
- Dear Esther – I Have Begun My Ascent (4 mins)
- Kingdom Hearts excerpts (4 mins)
- Shadow of the Colossus excerpts (8 mins)
“Fantastic worlds, epic adventures, complex characters and huge moral choices – the universe of computer gaming is a natural match for orchestral music, and in the 21st century games have created a huge and passionate global audience for some of the most vivid, ambitious and inventive music currently being written for symphony orchestra,” reads the BBC’s description of the event.
Further reading
A Kirby 30th anniversary concert has been announced
“In this first ever Gaming Prom, Robert Ames – best-known at the Proms for his explorations of sci-fi and electroacoustic music – takes an electronically expanded Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on an odyssey from the classic console titles of the 1980s, through Jessica Curry’s haunted soundscapes to the European concert premiere of music from Hildur Guðnadóttir’s and Sam Slater’s score for Battlefield 2042.”
Tickets for the show will go on sale on May 21 at 9am (UK time) but are likely to sell out quickly, as do most Proms tickets.
However, the concert is one of 21 Proms that are currently marked by the BBC as ‘Proms on TV’, to be broadcast on BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four or online. It will also be available to listen to on the BBC Sounds app for up to 30 days after the performance.
