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Dear Friends

This is actually something I wrote last week, but am only posting now.

Yesterday I went to an awesome event, the Final Fantasy Dear Friends concert in San Francisco. To anyone who has a chance go to go one of these, I highly recommend it. The music was outstanding and the song selection was almost perfect. This was what they played:

Liberi Fatali (FF VIII)
Zanarkand (FF X)
Tina (FF VI)
Theme of Love (FF IV)
Dear Friends (FF V)
Vamo alla Flamenco (FF IX)
Love Grows (FF VIII)

Intermission

Aerith's Theme (FF VII)
Not Alone (FF IX)
Ronfaure (FF XI)
Final Fantasy I-III Medley
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Medley
Final Fantasy (aka "The Prologue")

There was also an excellent encore, which I won't spoil (although most reviews do, so it's not hard to find if you're curious).

When they were announcing the songs beforehand, the one that got by far the most applause was Aerith's Theme, which the one I was most excited about too. (Tina was second both in amount of cheering and in my own interest level). But it turned out that some of the best songs were the ones I had the least expectations for: Love Grows and Liberi Fatali in the first half, and the FF I-III medley in the second half. The FF I-III medley started with the Prelude on a harp, which was great, and later on it included the Chocobo Theme, which got some cheers and laughs. Of course, whenever I hear the Chocobo Theme now I think of the lyrics from this flash video, which added to my amusement. So I would call those three songs the highlights, along with the encore. While nothing was bad, I thought some of the other arrangements were weaker than other versions I've heard (Tina, especially, was a lot weaker than the near-flawless Piano Collections version).

During some the songs they showed clips from the corresponding games on screens above the stage. Some of those were cool, but some weren't. (The clip for "To Zanarkand" was the best one). Overall, I would have been happy just watching the performers, and most of the time that's what they showed.

Despite all the great music, I think the highlight of the night for me was when Nobuo went up on stage and talked for a while. He was really funny and knew how to play to the crowd. It was great to see him, and the rest of the crowd clearly thought so too - the response he got was bigger than the one Yo-Yo Ma got when I saw him at Davies (a much bigger venue, but a much older crowd). It sounds like Nobuo wants to do more concerts, and I hope he does, because I definitely want to see more.