When video games meet the orchestra: Johns Creek Symphony takes on ‘Minecraft’

I’ll never forget the day one of my students referred to the Super Nintendo as “old timey video games.” It was a withering, hair-thinning remark that ushered in a new generation of gaming. Suddenly, titles like Roblox, Five Nights at Freddy’s and Fortnite were capturing youthful imaginations the way high-jumping plumbers and smart-aleck hedgehogs had occupied mine. 

Truth be told, I don’t understand most of these newfangled games. Roblox looks like Snow Crash by way of Teletubbies and Fortnite seems to involve doing home renovations while dodging artillery fire. (There’s skydiving as well. Don’t ask.) 

All of that pales in comparison to Minecraft. I never understood why kids would need a multiplayer online game where they build things with blocks when they already have actual building blocks. As such, I was perplexed to learn that the game would factor prominently in Soundcraft, the upcoming orchestral/performance art piece from the Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra. But for JCSO conductor Henry Cheng, the relevancy comes first in the form of community engagement, a throughline in the orchestra’s programming vision. 

“The fundamental belief is that music, and arts in general, is a reflection of culture and society where we are,” he explains. “It’s about saying, ‘What do people care about these days?’ How can we reflect that?”

The world at large, Cheng observes, is converging in online realms, with digital mixed-media projects becoming increasingly common. Thus, gaming affords the JCSO an opportunity for a remarkable new degree of cross-cultural engagement. “How do we create programming that engages all generations and all cultures of people?” he asks. To this end, he sees gaming as the great unifier. “The phenomenon of games, from esports taking over the world now, is exactly that reflection.”

As Cheng goes on to point out, the orchestra’s recent performance of the Firebird suite honors Stravinsky as one of the first film composers. With that foundation, it makes sense to segue into video games as the next evolution in soundtrack composition, with game soundtracks coming to occupy the same degree of artistic merit as the Hollywood scores of John Williams. 

It’s a noble vision, but I’m still perplexed by the brass tax reality of what’s going to happen on stage. Minecraft is going to be doing what with the orchestra, exactly? 

“In the game of Minecraft there’s these redstone blocks, and the way you stack, let’s say, a wooden box or an iron door over it will affect the different qualities of sound,” Cheng explains. “You can orchestrate an entire orchestra.” These blocks — and blocks make up the whole of the ever-expanding Minecraft world — can form circuits of programmed sounds. 

“One of the pieces we’re performing is Terry Riley’s In C,” he continues, mentioning that the piece is an early manifestation of the burgeoning minimalist school of composition. “This piece is composed in 53 different cells of music. If you can imagine, in the game of Minecraft, where you’re building out individual long lines of blocks denoting every single tone and duration, you can create 53 different cells of music that can be activated and performed by Minecraft gamers who are performing on their laptops.

To that end, a backline of gamers with laptops will join the orchestra on stage to play the Minecraft instruments in real time. Leading that wily band of laptop instrumentalists will be YouTube personality JazziiRed (aka Joe Nicholls), known for his Minecraft-themed videos. Examples of these remarkable Minecraft musical instruments fill his channel.

“I kind of stalked him,” laughs Cheng, explaining how JazziiRed came to be a part of the project. “I ended up spending quite a long time researching all the YouTubers that there’s this niche of redstone contraptions within Minecraft. I found Jazzii and he had made another music box. It was the most amazing musical thing I’ve ever seen online.” Cheng messaged JazziiRed at length until finally the creator’s own fans took notice and encouraged the collaboration.

Cheng’s wife, Joanne Kim, project producer and founder of Nonsense Art Foundation, to which Soundcraft belongs, is coordinating the event’s pre-concert exhibits, including a showcase of antique video game consoles courtesy of the Mimms Museum of Technology and Art (and yes, dear millennial reader, that word “antique” is referring to the gaming machines we grew up with. I’ll bring rollators for both of us).

“Once you walk in the venue, there are going to be three different pre-concert experiences,” she explains. “The first one is a retro games selection curated by Mimms Museum. The second collaboration is a virtual reality experience supported by Fulton County’s Futures Lab. The third collaboration is with Hyojin Kwon. She’s an architect and artist and faculty member at Georgia Tech. ” 

Maestro Cheng has proven time and again that his avant-garde orchestral visions — whether they involve K-pop, video game soundtracks, or anything in between — yield fascinating results. Within moments of hearing his infectious enthusiasm, he’s convinced me there’s more to this Minecraft thing than an elaborate excuse to sell keychains and collectable figurines at the checkout line at 2nd and Charles. 

But as I’m listening to Cheng and Kim lay out their vision, I’m struck by just how much the kid in my distant past who whiled away hours on Super Mario Bros. would have loved the idea of video arcades as high art and seen it as an opportunity to show his concerned parents that there was real artistic merit underneath it all. They’ve got my inner child ready to hit “start.” I think the current crop of gamer kids will be clamoring to log in, too. 

Where & when

The Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra will present Soundcraft: Symphonic Experience at the Goat Farm’s Loop facility on November 14. A pre-show retro gaming and virtual reality showcase will be presented at 6 p.m. with the concert following at 7:30. 

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Jordan Owen began writing about music professionally at the age of 16 in Oxford, Mississippi. A 2006 graduate of the Berklee College of Music, he is a professional guitarist, bandleader and composer. He is currently the lead guitarist for the jazz group Other Strangers, the power metal band Axis of Empires and the melodic death/thrash metal band Century Spawn.