Symphonic Game Music Concert

The Symphonic Game Music Concerts (German: Symphonische Spielemusikkonzerte) are a series of award-winning, annual German video game music concerts initiated in 2003, notable for being the longest running and the first of their kind outside Japan. They are produced by Thomas Böcker and performed by various orchestras conducted by Andy Brick (2003–2007), Arnie Roth (2008, 2009 and 2011), Niklas Willén (2010, 2012) and Eckehard Stier (from 2012).

From 2003 to 2007, GC in Concert took place at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig and was held as the official opening ceremony of the GC – Games Convention, a trade fair for video games in Leipzig. In 2008, the cancellation of the concert by the Leipzig Trade Fair resulted in a cooperation with the WDR, eventually spawning new video game music performances by its in-house ensembles, principally presented at the Cologne Philharmonic Hall.

Since 1999, Thomas Böcker has been working in the games industry as producer, director and advisor for a variety of soundtracks. His role as executive producer and project director of the Merregnon trilogy provided him with many contacts to conductors, orchestras and composers from around the world.

Inspired by game concerts from Japan, the Orchestral Game Music Concerts from the 1990s in particular, he developed a concept for the first event of this kind outside Japan. To attract as many people from the target audience as possible, the concert was to be scheduled alongside an established event connected to the game industry. In 2002, he proposed his idea to the Leipzig Trade Fair which agreed to hold the Symphonic Game Music Concert during the GC – Games Convention, the first trade fair for video games in Europe.

The Leipzig Trade Fair funded GC in Concert while Böcker himself was responsible for planning the event, inviting composers, obtaining the approval of the individual publishers to play music from their titles and assembling the concert programs. He did not want to limit the selection of compositions performed to European games, but instead opted for the best Asian, American and European titles of recent years, providing a wide range of musical styles.

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