This year’s FMF will culminate in the Video Games Music Gala, which is scheduled for the Saturday evening falling on 2 June 2018. – This niche attracts our audience’s growing interest. The game music concerts staged to date enjoyed massive turnouts, so we decided to hold a large-scale event with a line-up featuring iconic names and top game titles, said Robert Piastowski, the festival’s Artistic Director. Indeed, the program is made up of such hits as Michael Giacchino’s Medal of Honor and Christopher Drake’s Batman Arkham, and Academy Award winner Elliot Goldenthal will perform a Final Fantasy – inspired piece composed especially for FMF listeners, Jesper Kyd (Assassin’s Creed, Hitman), Austin Wintory (Journey, Assasin’s Creed Syndicate) and Christopher Drake (Batman Arkham, Injustice I & II) are among the game music stars who announced their participation in the Gala.

TAURON Arena Krakow will give its stage up to the Beethoven Academy Orchestra and the Pro Musica Mundi Choir, with maestro Ludwig Wicki, festival affiliate from the very outset, playing host to the event. – My cooperation with FMF goes back eleven years, but until now I mainly moderated simultaneous film screenings. The Video Games Music Gala is a spectacular event and a great challenge, and I’m very excited about it, said the Swiss conductor. Wicki will share the conductor stand with Irish composer Eímear Noone, who cmposed for the soundtrack to Blizzard Entertainment’s iconic World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor.

Eímear Noone is an award-winning, acclaimed game music composer and conductor. Apart from World of Warcraft, her resume features such titles as Starcraft II, The Legend of Zelda and Diablo III. In 2014 she received the Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Video Game Score. As she herself says, it was an accident that got her into composing for games: – I’m a purely classically trained musician who is passionate about the orchestra, and vocal and orchestral music. I was once involved in a choral arrangement for Metal Gear Solid. I didn’t even know I was working on a game. Then came the World of Warcraft adventure. I was there in the studio, looking up at the monitors going “Oh my god, this is so beautiful”. It just blew my mind, said Eímear Noone in her interview with Frank Whelan, two months before the first Dublin International Games Music Festival. In April 2015, when the festival was in full swing, Noone – dubbed the Irish Queen of Game Music by the Irish media – carried out a project of precedent character. She created an international orchestra composed of musicians who had been playing her pieces at home. Noone led an over 100-strong orchestra of on-stage and at-home musicians, where the live performance was combined with fan video recordings.

This year in June, the international orchestra will save a few spots for Polish game music fans – winners of the unique new Krakow Film Music Festival contest: Be a Part of FMF Reality. Contestants will be asked to perform and record (amateur recordings will do) a part of the World of Warcraft score: Warlords of Draenor: Malach, Angel Messenger. The musical score will soon be made available on the Festival’s website. The score is intended for orchestral instruments (violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, clarinet, oboe, English horn, bassoon, trumpet, French horn, trombone, bass trombone, tuba, piano, harp, kettledrums, multiple percussion) and choir (soprano, alto, tenor, bass). Each candidate may submit at most three applications. Applications must be submitted between 1 February and 31 March 2018 via e-mail to: fmfreality@fmf.fm.

Submitted recordings will be evaluated by Eímear Noone and her husband, producer and composer of game music, documentaries and trailers, and Emmy nominee: Craig Stuart Garfinkle. Three winners of Be a Part of FMF Reality will be announced in early May 2018, and they will give us their winning performance on 2 June at the ceremonious Video Games Music Gala held at TAURON Arena Krakow.

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