Friends and Partners of the GSO
Other student/community GSOs
Magruder GSO
In December of 2008, two students from Magruder High School founded the Magruder Gamer Symphony Orchestra (GSO). Inspired by a similar group at the University of Maryland, the Magruder GSO is a instrumental ensemble of high school students dedicated to the arrangement and performance of video game music. Completely student administrated and organized, the Magruder GSO performs regularly at Magruder music concerts as the only non-classroom ensemble. All pieces performed by the Magruder GSO are arranged in-house.
Damascus GSO
We're an ensemble based in Damascus High School that arranges, writes, rehearses and performs video game music for the little-old town of Damascus.
Ithaca College GSO
The Ithaca College Gamer Symphony Orchestra aims to provide musicians who love video game music an ensemble through which they can perform it, to bring the music to a wider audience, and to help expand the public's view of video game music as a legitimate art form.
Washington Metro GSO
The Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra is a community orchestra and choir whose mission is to share and celebrate video game music with a wide audience by putting on affordable, accessible concerts in the Washington, D.C., area.
Baltimore GSO
We are a community orchestra that seeks to enrich, entertain, and educate the Baltimore & Maryland Community through the use of music from video games.
Game Music Ensemble at UCLA
The student-run orchestra, choir, and chamber ensembles at UCLA dedicated to performing and celebrating original video game music.
8-bit Orchestra at UD
We are a Student Organization at the University of Delaware that is dedicated to playing music from video games. We are a full orchestra that play everything from indie games all the way to the orchestral stylings of Final Fantasy.
Conventions
All of these are popular local conventions that GSO is associated with.
MAGFest
"In short, MAGFest is a music and video gaming festival run by fans, for fans. In more verbose terms, it's an annual event dedicated to the celebration of video games and video game music. Every year offers 24-hour console, arcade, and PC game rooms, live video game cover bands, a vendors area, and guest speakers from the video game industry and fan scene. It also features a "JamSpace" available to all attendees for impromptu music performances. Numerous other events are scheduled each day."
GSO has attended and tabled MAGFest since MAGfest 7, had a panel titled "Orchestral Game Music & Society", and performed our arrangement of "The Promised Land" for Nobuo Uematsu and The Earthbound Papas at MAGFest X.
Katsucon
Katsucon is a fan convention for multicultural enthusiasts and entertainment. It is an annual three-day event held in or around Washington D.C.
Otakon
Otakon is an annual three-day anime convention held during July/August in Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
SuperSmashCon
Super Smash Con is a video game convention and tournament focused on the Super Smash Bros. series, held in Chantilly, Virginia at the Dulles Expo Center.
Professional organizations
OverClocked Remix
Founded in 1999, OverClocked ReMix is an organization dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form. Its primary focus is www.ocremix.org, a website featuring thousands of free fan arrangements, information on game music and composers, resources for aspiring artists, and a thriving community of video game music fans.
Listen to our arrangement of Still Alive, the first remix of the piece on OCR, titled Live from [SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE], or our arragement from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Hyrulian Highlands. Our newest remix to make it to OCR is our three-piece Katamari Damacy "Prelude, Fugue, and Groove" performance, which happens to be OCR's FIRST Katamari remix!
Video Games Live
Video Games Live (tm) is an immersive concert event featuring music from the most popular video games of all time. Top orchestras & choirs perform along with exclusive video footage and music arrangements, synchronized lighting, solo performers, electronic percussionists, live action and unique interactive segments to create an explosive entertainment experience!
GSO had its arrangement of Korobeiniki (the "Tetris Opera"), by our own Conductor Emeritus Greg Cox, performed at its Strathmore concert to two sold-out shows in 2011. The performance even included our own former music director Chris Apple as the soloist (which you can watch here). GSO will again be lending a piece to VGL 2012: an as-yet-unnamed Final Fantasy piece. Make sure to attend to find out which one!
Video Game Orchestra
VGO, founded by a Berklee College of Music alumni Shota Nakama, is an orchestra that performs contemporary arrangements of video game music. As the first and only New England based orchestra that focuses on showcasing interactive media compositions, VGO is dedicated to provide access and raise awareness of orchestral video game-related compositions.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
GSO has performed to large crowds in the wonderful Kogod Courtyard at the American Art Museum on two seaparate occasions thus far: as part of the Art of Video Games exhibit in Spring 2012 and as part of the Watch This! Revelations in Media Art exhibit in Spring 2015. The museum has always been an incredible host, and we hope to return again!
Kennedy Center
The Kennedy Center's page on the GSO. We performed here at the Millenium Stage in 2018 as part of the Direct Current inaugural season.
Page was last modified: June 09 2020