Cal Poly Recital Series—An Adventure Through Video Game Music with Ryan McGaughey, piano

The Department of Dance, Music, and Theatre at Cal Poly Humboldt presents “The Cal Poly Humboldt Recital Series: An Adventure Through Video Game Music with Ryan McGaughey, piano”— Join us Thursday, April 27th at 8:00 p.m. in Fulkerson Recital Hall. Concert tickets are $15 General, $5 Children, and $5 for Cal Poly Humboldt students with ID. Tickets may be purchased at the door or in advance at centerarts.humboldt.edu including tickets to our paid livestream ($7).
Ryan McGaughy speaks about the program, “This will not quite be your traditional solo piano concert… there’s going to be a LOT of music, but also visuals, giveaways, and battles that will involve YOU, the audience (no violence of course). It’s likely going to be a type of “solo piano concert” that you’ve never seen before, but I hope it will be a fun and entertaining event for everyone who attends!
Most of the music on the program is from relatively recent video games, most of them released in the past 6 years. The exception being Chrono Trigger which was released in 1995. Despite the program containing music being written recently, the music varies a lot in style and feel. The program will have music from some big name composers in the video game music space such as, Toby Fox, Lena Raine, and two of my personal favorites, Keiichi Okabe and Christopher Larkin.
Despite the music being from video games, the solo piano arrangements that I’ll be performing are arranged in a very classical piano style and therefore can be enjoyed by both video gamers and classical music lovers.
I wanted to say a little about why I’m doing a music concert like this. I’ve been playing video games pretty much since the first day that I was capable of holding a game controller. Good music was something that always pulled me into a video game, even before I started studying piano at age 12. When I first started piano, I actually was not so into it and quit playing after a few months of piano lessons. It was not until I came across of a video online of someone who called himself the Video Game Pianist (aka Martin Leung) playing music from Super Mario Bros. on piano, that I then realized I could play music from my favorite video games on piano. So I then took up playing the piano again. Through the Video Game Pianist, who was and still is a fantastic classical pianist, I discovered the music of Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, and Felix Mendelssohn, and realized I loved classical music. I then got into playing classical music as well and went on to get degrees in music and piano performance.
If it was not for video game music and the composers, performers, and arrangers that so passionately dedicate their time to it, I would not be playing piano right now and not involved in the community as a piano teacher and accompanist. It is for this reason that I feel I owe a lot to video game music. I hope to spread the awareness of video game music and its composers with this concert I’m doing at Cal Poly Humboldt. I hope the music will inspire someone to get involved in music, just like as it did with me.”

DATES/TIMES

WHERE

• Fulkerson Recital Hall

PRICE

• $15 / $7 Livestream / $5 Cal Poly Students with ID / $5 Children