Words by Owen Danoff

Few people know video game music as well as Eímear Noone, who is set to embark yet again on a run of Video Games in Concert performances starting May 31st in Edinburgh.

Noone’s resume tells the story of a composer and conductor whose fascination with music has led them down paths both well-trodden and uncharted. In 2019, Noone performed alongside light itself, conducting BASE Hologram’s Maria Callas in Concert tour.  In 2020, she became the first woman to conduct the orchestra at the Academy Awards. As a composer, Noone’s work can be heard in the films So This is Christmas, The Canterville Ghost, and Two by Two: Overboard!

It is the realm of video games, however, in which Noone’s career began in earnest, and where she has found her largest music community yet. Noone’s first job out of school was as an assistant orchestrator for Jason Hayes on the first iteration of World of Warcraft, a game for which she has also contributed music and thematic material. That experience began a fruitful relationship between Noone and World of Warcraft developer Blizzard, with Noone going on to conduct the scores of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Diablo III, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and Overwatch.

Noone is a self-proclaimed music nerd, which is a modest understatement given her depth of appreciation for the nuances of tonality, sonority, and composition. It’s that appreciation, plus an intuitive understanding of her audience, that leads her to program evenings of music that jump seamlessly from the iconic work of Mario and Zelda composer Koji Kondo to the contributions of next-generation tastemakers like Austin Wintory and Jessica Curry. Noone’s shows have a sense of humor, too; she’s quick to make a playful jab at the grown men sure to cry when she leads the orchestra through a rendition of a Yoko Shimomura's Kingdom Hearts theme.

Though she didn’t say it outright, Noone speaks of video game music as though she considers it the beating heart of classical tradition. She grew up playing Beethoven and Brahms but is quick to acknowledge that the largest audience for orchestral music in the world is that of video game players. It’s in that way that Noone’s work as both composer and conductor of shows like Video Games in Concert helps shepherd fans the world over toward the style of music—if not always the exact pieces—that sparked her passion for the art in the first place.

You began composing and conducting quite early in life. When did you feel  that you had a path ahead of you in classical music?

I grew up in an area that's famous for traditional Irish music, and I was playing that really early on as a child, from about five years of age. I remember seeing an orchestra on TV and going, “Oh my God, I'm doing that.” It’s really strange; what an oddball thing to do. 

I grew up in the countryside, and we had a lot of music going on. It’s the classic thing of the church; I'm not very religious, but there was always some ceremony, some celebration, something. Because it's Ireland, we would cobble together whatever we were doing with a bit of traditional music thrown in there and a bit of classical. In our little village, we had a very renowned composer of traditional Irish tunes. His name is Paddy Fahy. I thought, growing up, that the list of careers you have is: farmer, banker, doctor, nurse, teacher, and then composer.

Classical music is my background, but what was really important to me was when I was a kid and I saw the movie Willow and heard James Horner’s score. I didn't know you were allowed to mix the orchestra with world music instruments. James Horner used things like pennywhistles, and in Braveheart, he used the uilleann pipes, which are from the west of Ireland where I’m from. I couldn’t believe it. I’m thinking, “Hang on a second. I didn’t know that was allowed.” That was profound to me. I grew up loving John Williams, but it was James Horner where I sat up and went, “I want to do this.”

What became appealing to you about conducting music that you didn’t write? Did it give you a sense of ownership of the music, or did something else make it compelling? 

Everything I’ve done in music has been driven by and based on instinct. Literally everything. As a composer, for so much of what we do, we learn technique, but instinct is so important. I’ve always gone on that and how something makes me feel, especially if it’s a mystery to me. With performing, the goosebumps, the chills, the feels, those emotions… It's different to me from composition. I get a different sense of satisfaction.

The best day for me is when I come away having written something that I actually can tolerate. That’s a great day. That’s a day well spent, and I’m super happy. Then, I can go to the pub and enjoy a glass of wine. I’ve deserved it, I’ve earned it; this thing didn’t exist, and now it exists. I don’t get that from conducting. Conducting is much more fleeting because that music only exists in that moment and then it’s gone. Every single note, every bar, exists for those moments, and then it’s gone, and it doesn’t really exist. The score is potential energy. It’s the potential for music to happen, but it’s not the music. That fascinates me.

If I’m going to bring it up to the orchestra, I have to spend time with this music. I really need to like these pieces because I have to live with them. I live with them longer, often, than the composer when they were writing it. I always felt conducting made me a better orchestrator and a better composer, orchestration made me a better composer and conductor, and composition made me a better orchestrator and conductor. 

I always felt like my inspiration from the past was the kapellmeister, the chapel master, who had to play the organ, write for the choir and the organ, copy all the parts, conduct the orchestra, conduct the choir, and be this kind of all-rounder. I felt like for me, that was more authentic because it meant I would delve more deeply into the truth-seeking part of music. I still don’t know what that is. It’s still fascinating, and every day I’m learning something new. You learn things about yourself as well, which is, “I didn’t know I would write like that,” or, “I didn’t know I could come up with something like that,” or, “Please don’t ask me to do it again, because I don’t know where that came from.” It’s such a mystery to me, and it’s almost like — it’s going to sound so cliché — the more I spend time with music, the more mysterious it is.

Do you feel like in exploring other people’s scores, you’re getting any closer to understanding certain things about music, or does it only bring up more questions?

I feel like, when I’m writing, I have this swirling bank of stuff inside that’s just there. It helps me with orchestration and coming up with ideas. There are certain things that you can manufacture and there are certain compositional techniques, but they work differently at different tempi. They work differently at different parts of the bar. They work differently in different orchestral combinations. 

It’s fascinating how with just 12 pitches, we keep reinventing. We keep coming up with something that’s new and fresh. I think a lot of it is that osmosis factor; what we’re surrounded by, and what we’re listening to. This is why diversity matters so much in what we do. Homogeneity is something to be avoided.

You have several performances of Video Games in Concert coming up. Is there a reason you keep coming back to performing video game scores and not film scores?

In terms of the concerts, it’s the audience. This audience is so dear to me and has been since the very first time in 2011 when I did some work for Nintendo on their E3 announcement of the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda.

We’re on this hydraulic stage in the basement—I mustn’t have been listening or paying attention to that particular detail—and I’m looking at the players, and they’re looking at me, and I go, “How did we get here, exactly?” Then, the stage started to rise. It was like the slowest fairground ride ever. I was unaware of the seating capacity in the building. I think it’s about 6,000 people. I had my back to the audience, and we’re rising out of the ground, and all of a sudden, there’s this absolute roar from the crowd. I was bowled over by it, and I thought, “What on Earth is this?” And it was just us, the orchestra.

We’re not used to the rockstar treatment. I think we should all be cheering for “The Rite of Spring” like lunatics, but people don’t. That was my first experience with that audience, and I thought, “These people are absolutely nuts about the same thing as me,” which is the orchestra. Their support and the way they treat the orchestra just makes me love them forever. No matter what I do in music, and I’ve done a lot of crazy things, I’ll always come back to this audience, because they’re so endearing. You get multiple generations, and the medium that gets them in the door to hear the orchestra is video games, and I think it has to be embraced. There are still orchestras catching on. They’re like, “Oh my God, look at the way the audience is going crazy for it, and the music isn’t bad.” I’m like, “Yep.”

I love when we have a principal cellist, if we’re doing something like Gustavo Santaolalla’s The Last of Us score, or some of my friend Austin Wintory’s Journey score, and I’ll say, “You don’t even know, mate. You don’t even know that you are a complete rock star. Just wait until you see how people react to your solo.” They look at me like I’m half daft, and then you see these incredibly experienced musicians play this music and the audience goes absolutely nuts. You’ll see these principal cellists’ façade fall away to complete amazement. It’s very moving to me.

This is a massive, massive audience listening to the sonority of the orchestra on a daily basis, and that’s huge. That’s more sets of ears listening to orchestral music every day than has ever happened in the history of recorded music. The numbers bear that out. I had the privilege of working on the very first World of Warcraft. It was my first job as an assistant orchestrator, directly out of college. When Blizzard had their 10th anniversary six or seven years ago, they had over 100 million individual players of World of Warcraft. That’s 100 million people on one game, listening to the orchestra.

Is there a piece on these Video Games in Concert setlists where you know that every time, everyone’s going to absolutely lose their minds?

Yes, there are always certain nostalgia pieces. One that always surprises the hell out of me is that there will be grown men in the audience in tears over the Kingdom Hearts theme. I always dedicate it to the girl gamers in the audience to give them a laugh. I say, “It’s not because it’s got harps and whistles and flutes. It’s because of the laugh you’ll get when you look around and see all the grown men crying throughout the piece.” Zelda is one that always gets to people. The Mario theme is always a laugh. For me, I always balance the epic new scores with some nostalgia, and I always include indie games as well. 

And it depends on where I am. I played the Royal Albert Hall two years in a row, and the second year, I went, “I need to have lots of UK composers on this program.” I reached out to my UK friends and it was just a celebration. It was people like Grant Kirkhope, who had just done Mario + Rabbids, Robin Beanland, who had just done Sea of Thieves, Jessica Curry, who I absolutely love, and Gareth Coker is another one that I had on there.

Often, I’ll see three generations at the concert. I’ll see grandparents, who are the season ticket holders, who are using this as an excuse to get their grandkids into the orchestra. I’ve met so many people who’ve come up to me going, “I had no idea what this was about, I don’t know anything about video games, and I really enjoyed the music just on its own.” Their kids are my age group. That’s who Kingdom Hearts is for, and who Final Fantasy and Zelda are for. Then you have the younger kids. There’s a piece from Fortnite by Pinar Toprak that I love; we’ve programmed that. Then there are some songs as well; I love bringing in songs.

This is something that I want to put out there as AI encroaches more and more. This is an audience that doesn’t want to be manipulated emotionally by bots and AI. They want to know us. They want to know that this is coming from an authentic place. It’s coming from creatives who feel as passionate about the work as they do. I would urge indie developers and developers to be careful of this audience, which is so loyal and so generous in that they want to know us. They want to know the game designers. They want to know the animators. They want to know where the inspiration comes from. 

They want to know the backstory, which has always given me an opportunity to share our musical backstory, which is the classical repertoire. We’re part of the legacy of that; an offshoot of that legacy. This is an audience that I trust and I would never, ever patronise, because it’s a sophisticated audience that wants to know more and more, and wants to be fully engaged in the experience.

Tickets for Eímear's 'Video Games Music: In Concert' can be found here.