Performances
After Leung’s first online video was viewed by an estimated 40 million people, he began performing video game music from other popular gaming series including Legend of Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, Halo, Earthworm Jim, and Final Fantasy. As Leung released more videos of himself performing a broader collection of video game music, his work began to show up on iFilm, MSN Video, Ebaum's World, Gprime, and Albino Blacksheep.
In February 2005, noticing his skill and growing popularity, Tommy Tallarico asked Leung to join his upcoming Video Games Live tour, the first North American concert tour devoted entirely to video game music. Before making appearances with VGL, Tallarico asked Leung to perform at the newly minted Walk of Game and at 2005’s Game Developers Conference’s Game Audio Network Guild Awards (G.A.N.G). In May 2005, he was hired by BradyGames to perform piano at its E3 booth. On July 6, 2005, Video Game Live's premiere, Leung performed piano arrangements of Final Fantasy’s "The Prelude" and "One Winged Angel” to approximately 11,000 fans in the Hollywood Bowl. Notable attendees include Hideo Kojima, Koji Kondo (via pre-recorded video), Lorne Lanning, Yuji Naka, Marty O’Donnell, and Ted Price .
At the March 2006 Game Developers Conference, Leung performed his piano arrangements of the Zelda, Monkey Island, Halo 2, Myst, and Advent Rising games at G.A.N.G; some of the composers for these games including Tim Larkin, Clint Bajakian, Marty O'Donnell, Jack Wall, and Tommy Tallarico were in attendance. During the GDC, Leung also played songs from Final Fantasy at the Video Games Live sold-out concert in the San Jose Civic Auditorium.
Since joining Video Games Live, Leung has performed several pieces, including his Final Fantasy Medley, Super Mario Brothers music, and a rendition of the music to Tetris. A number of these performances have been done blindfolded.
Read more about this topic: Video Game Pianist
Famous quotes containing the word performances:
“This play holds the season’s record [for early closing], thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence it ran just five performances too many.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”
Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle
But you wanted to know why so much action took on so much life
And still managed to remain itself, aloof, smiling and courteous.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)