“Journey inhabits this really beautiful balance between unique and simple gameplay, emotionally-charged string melodies and a mystical art style." – Kayla Herrera, CinemaBlend
about
You wake alone, surrounded by miles of burning, sprawling desert, and soon discover the looming mountaintop that is your goal. Faced with rolling sand dunes, age-old ruins, caves and howling winds, your passage will not be an easy one. A cloaked avatar, you travel and explore this ancient, mysterious world alone, or with a stranger you meet along the way. While the goal is to get to the mountaintop, the experience is the discovery of who you are, the story of this place, and your purpose.
The Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble (praised by the New York Times for its “conviction, authority and finesse”) teams up with composer Austin Wintory to present an original, interactive live performance of his Grammy-nominated score to the video game Journey. Described as "the most beautiful game of its time" by IGN, critics have called Journey one of gaming's crowning achievements. It is the fastest selling game to date on the Playstation Network.
Never the same each time it is played, Journey is an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure to experience a person’s life passage and their intersections with others. In this unprecedented collaboration, live musicians respond to the actions of game players in real time on stage.
Bass flute generously provided by Trevor James Flutes. Live players for the Chicago show were selected through a competition presented by Killer Queen Mercury Squad.
In 2016, Journey LIVE raised $52,505 on Kickstarter from 1,196 backers all over the world. Check out the campaign here.
Length of show: 90-120 minutes
media
collaborators
Austin Wintory began his obsession with composing back when he was ten years old, when he discovered Jerry Goldsmith’s scores to Patton and A Patch of Blue. After a busy high school career composing for the student orchestras, Austin went on to study at NYU and USC with composers Morten Lauridsen, Charles Fussell, and Erica Muhl. Never satisfied with working in a single medium, Austin has worked in the concert world, film music, video games, and miscellaneous others.
In March 2012, the PlayStation3 game Journey was released, after three years of work. The game instantly became Sony’s fastest-selling PlayStation title, and the soundtrack album debuted on the Billboard charts higher than any original score in gaming history. In December 2012, more history was made when it was announced that Journey had become the first-ever Grammy-nominated videogame score. The score subsequently won an Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences D.I.C.E. award, two British Academy Awards, a Spike TV VGA, and IGN’s “Overall Music of the Year,” five G.A.N.G. Awards and host of others. The score features the Macedonia Radio Symphonic Orchestra and a lineup of top soloists (Audio excerpts available here). Orchestral excerpts, and the stand alone mini-concerto “Woven Variations” have been consistently scheduled for concert performances all over the world since its release.
Beginning humbly as a Kickstarter campaign, Austin’s next major game effort was Stoic Studio’s The Banner Saga, a unique and mature turn-based strategy / RPG hybrid with a dazzling art direction. The score featured the Dallas Wind Symphony, America’s premiere wind ensemble, and an all-star trio of YouTube musicians: Malukah, Peter Hollens and Taylor Davis. The game and soundtrack were released in early 2014 to critical and commercial success; the score earned Austin over a dozen awards and nominations, including his 4th and 5th British Academy Award nominations, and won the first-ever peer-voted ASCAP Composer’s Choice Award for “Best Video Game Score of the Year.” He is currently working with Stoic on The Banner Saga 2, which was announced live, on-stage at The Game Awards in December 2014 to an audience of nearly 2 million people.
Most recently, Austin wrote and produced the score for Ubisoft’s latest blockbuster: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. The music is at its heart a chamber score deeply rooted in 19th century traditions, featuring virtuoso musicians Sandy Cameron and Tina Guo, and an all-star ensemble recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London. The score earned Austin his 6th British Academy Award nomination, and second ASCAP Composer’s Choice Award nomination, and has been lauded as among the top game scores for 2015 by major industry organizations like GameTrailers, IGN, Movie Music UK, the International Film Music Critics Association and the Hollywood Music in Media Awards.
Austin has also scored nearly 50 feature films, and his first major film score, for the Sundance Film Festival-winning film Captain Abu Raed, was shortlisted for the 2009 Academy Awards for Best Original Score by the LA Times. His next major film, Grace, was also a hit at the Sundance Film Festival. Austin’s score (which featured a wild array of custom-recorded sounds such as babies crying and horse flies, in addition to a large ensemble of clarinets at London’s famed Abbey Road Studios), was also highly lauded, earning a notorious Fangoria Chainsaw Award nomination and being cited by “Visions in Sound” (a popular film scoring radio program) as among the Top 10 Scores for 2010. His most recent films are writer/director Adam Alleca’s Standoff, starring Thomas Jane and Laurence Fishburne, and Amin Matalqa’s The Rendezvous, starring Stana Katic.
Outside of games, Austin also maintains a busy concert composing schedule, with regular appearances throughout the world. Most recently he premiered the commissioned work “This Gaming Life” with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, a theatrical work created in collaboration with the legendary comedians called “Tripod.” Announced in 2016 was also the unveiling of his partnership with the Chicago-based chamber group Fifth House Ensemble, with whom he will tour in a production of “Journey LIVE,” a recreation of the hit PlayStation title, performed interactively live. His chamber music show “Mythos,” combining his own music with other contemporary works, is also touring throughout 2015 and beyond following a successful world premiere in Manhattan at New York Comic Con in 2014. Forthcoming he will also have premieres with the West Michigan Symphony, Colorado Symphony and others.
Passionate about education, Austin is a regular public speaker at schools and events around the world, in addition to pre-concert talks and workshops. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the non-profit Education Through Music – Los Angeles, as well as the Board of Directors for the Society of Composers and Lyricists.
For more information, visit www.austinwintory.com
Patrick O’Malley (1989) is a composer whose works explore the musical interplay between emotion, color, energy, and landscape. Currently living in Los Angeles, O’Malley grew up in Indiana, where he cultivated an interest in composition from hearing music at the local orchestra, studying piano and double bass, film scores at the movie theater, and even MIDI compositions for videogames being written at the time. His pieces span many of the contemporary mediums for classical music (orchestra, chamber ensembles, vocal music, film scores etc.), and have been performed across the United States as well as in France and Germany. Often when writing a new piece, O’Malley considers the listener’s imagination as much as every other musical element – an admittedly and enjoyably subjective endeavor.
THE GROCERY LIST: Most recently, O’Malley has been recognized and/or performed by organizations including the American Composers Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Next On Grand National Composers Intensive with wild Up, the Society of Composers Inc., The American Prize 1st Place for orchestral music in 2015 (with additional awards in orchestral, chamber, and wind band music in 2014), the Boston New Music Initiative, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award (finalist in 2012, 2014, 2015), and Fulcrum Point New Music Project. He has spent summers as a student at various music festivals, including the Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin Festival, Fresh Inc. Festival, and FUBiS composition course in Berlin. He is gratefully indebted to his private teachers over the years for helping guide his work, the most recent of which include Andrew Norman, Samuel Adler, and Frank Ticheli. O’Malley is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.
For more information, visit www.patrickomalleymusic.com
past performances
Journey LIVE at MAGFest - Saturday, February 20, 2016, 2:00pm Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center 201 Waterfront Street National Harbor, MD 20756 $75 Festival Pass
Journey LIVE at Steppenwolf Theatre - Sunday, February 28, 2016, 7:30pm Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N Halsted Street Chicago, IL 60614 $25 General Admission
Journey LIVE at Florida Atlantic University - Saturday, April 9, 2016, 7:00pm University Theatre, 777 Glades Road Boca Raton, FL 33431 $15 Reserved Seats
Journey LIVE at University of Illinois at Springfield Saturday, April 16, 2016, 8:00pm Sangamon Auditorium, 1 William Maxwell Lane Springfield, IL 62703 $44 Reserved Seats
Journey LIVE at National Sawdust - Friday, July 8, 2016, 8:30pm 80 N 6th Street Brooklyn, NY 11249 $60 Advance, $75 Doors
Journey LIVE at Mount Royal University - Friday, May 5, 2017, 7:30pm 4825 Mount Royal Gate SW Calgary, AB T3E 6K6 $44 / $69 / $69 CAD
Journey LIVE at UT Austin - Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 8:00pm Bass Concert Hall 2350 Robert Dedman Dr Austin, TX 78712 $10 / $25 / $40
Journey LIVE at Kenyon College - Friday, February 16, 2018, 8:00pm Rosse Hall Auditorium 105 College Dr Gambier, OH 43022 Free
Journey LIVE at San Francisco Conservatory of Music - Saturday, February 24, 2018, 5:30pm Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall 50 Oak St San Francisco, CA 94102 $20 General, $15 Students and Seniors
Journey LIVE at San Jose State University - Friday, April 13, 2018, 7:00pm Hammer Theatre 101 Pasea De San Antonio San Jose, CA 95113 $29-46
instrumentation
flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, bass, piano, voice, harp, percussion, conductor