Interview with Symphony of the Goddesses Conductor

In a recent interview with Amy Anderson, the conductor of Symphony of the Goddess, several great questions were asked with befitting answers. These range from questions such as how she is feeling about the tour and and if she had played any Zelda games prior to the tour. The music that she conducts is very well done and a great extension of the games music itself. It would be great to attend an event as exiting as that and it would be one of the best things a Zelda fan could do.

Check out some of the questions after the jump!

Before this tour, were you a Legend of Zelda fan?
I have been familiar with the Zelda games for many years, as my two boys grew up playing The Legend of Zelda. I only became acquainted with the symphonic score, however, much later. I have listened to the original music, and I am amazed at how the orchestrators fleshed out the original music and brought it to full fruition. It is so beautiful!

Miss Anderson, what I found one of the most impressive parts of the performance, was how in sync with the projected video the orchestra was. Is it difficult to perform this way?
Select members of the orchestra, as well as I, have a click monitor in our earpieces. This ensures that the orchestra musicians play exactly in sync with the video images. Being in sync with the images is not really difficult with the click monitors that we use. What is difficult is trying to play expressively and musically while listening to the click. Playing with a click can result in a very mechanical and sterile performance, if one is not careful. So I try to round the edges of each measure, and give the phrases a long, beautiful line. Sculpting the harmonic arrival points also make it sound spontaneous, as if we were not playing with a click track.

That sounds like quite the challenge indeed. Have you added your own colors to the performances? If so, why and what parts did you change?
I do not change the notes in the score and thus honor what the composers and arrangers have written. But I do in fact add color to the symphonic sound that the orchestra produces. By color I mean the type of sound that I cultivate from the orchestra. I am constantly adapting my conducting technique to add fullness to the string sound, or brass sound, for instance. I conduct each orchestra in a different way according to their technical and rhythmic proficiencies. My goal is always to produce a rich, symphonic sound rather than a choppy and harsh sound, which often happens when conductors work with a click track

Do you feel the scores manage to reflect the different moods and themes of the games and if so, can you please spare a few examples?
The Song of Healing is one of my favorite songs and yes, the score definitely reflects the moods and themes. The use of the delicate flute, harps and piano give the Song of Healing a tender and transparent quality and reflects the emotions of the heart. The composers and orchestrators use instruments that have been traditionally linked to certain emotions. For instance, Link plays the Ocarina, which was drawn from Tamino playing the flute in the Mozart opera The Magic Flute. Harps have been associated with certain spiritual qualities since the time of the ancient Greeks, and using them in particular places in Zelda allow them to work their emotional magic on us. The music of Ganondorf is expressed in Zelda by the use of heavy full brass, percussion and an almost violent and unpredictable compositional style. I often get goosebumps when I hear his theme. It is very creepy music!

This interview was a great read and and I learned loads from it. It would be great to go to Symphony of the Goddess one day and would surely be an event that I would never forget. To check out the full article click here, hopefully you will find it as interesting as I did.

What did you think of the questions and answers of this interview? Drop a comment below sharing your thoughts.

Source: GoNintendo