For some Iowa orchestras, video game scores may be the key to attracting younger audiences

With a flurry of fingers and bows, 70 musicians spring into a swirling and epic score. As the rippling harp, piercing flute and chanted Latin lyrics from a 50-member chorus ebb, a solo soprano’s voice carries forward, soaring above the audience that has settled quietly in the Urbandale High School auditorium on a late June Sunday afternoon.

The orchestra’s piece? The main theme from the 2008 video game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl .

The Des Moines Gamer Symphony Orchestra is Iowa’s only ensemble that exclusively plays music from video games. It celebrated its fifth anniversary this summer with a free concert that played arrangements from iconic games like Civilization IV , Final Fantasy VII and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time .

“These songs have been running through my head my whole life,” said the orchestra’s founder, Aaron Barker. He recalled holding his Game Boy to his ear as a child just to listen to the scores through the garbled sound chip. “I loved it, and the music just resonated so much.”

A handful of video game orchestras have popped up across the country over the years, bringing together gamers and musicians alike to perform scores that evoke excitement, thrill and grand heroism — as well as nostalgia. Barker heard his first gamer symphony orchestra while living in Maryland, performed by the university-based ensemble that has played since 2005. He subsequently joined the orchestra, as well as the Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra (WMGSO) based in Rockville, Md.

When he brought the concept of the free-to-attend, volunteer-based orchestra back with him to Iowa, he was astounded by the level of interest he received. Over 200 people came to the first concert in 2019.

“Right away, people started asking me, ‘Well, when are we gonna do this again?’” he said.

Many members of the orchestra’s ensemble love to game. Others simply like to play the music, which can be complicated and offers its own rewarding challenge. Conductor Phil Peters, a retired high school orchestra teacher who joined the symphony in 2023, only recently bought a Nintendo Switch, but that wasn’t necessary for him to recognize the music’s storytelling power.

“I started listening to it, looking at the scores, and realizing that the video game music itself gets a lot of inspiration from some of the big classical pieces,” he said.

He also sees the music as an excellent way to engage young people and bring them to the orchestra.

“As symphony orchestra audiences get older and can't come anymore, how do you branch out and reach the younger audiences?” he asked. “It's a challenge that orchestras across the country face. I think the Gamer Symphony Orchestra is one means to do that, because it connects the music with where the audiences are.”

Boss battle: Reversing a downward trend

Audience preferences and priorities have changed. According to the League of American Orchestras , the orchestra field continues to lose older audience members faster than it gains younger, new audiences. And while overall ticket revenue was 26% higher in the 2024 season than in 2019, signaling recovery from the pandemic, overall attendance to classical music events has been declining since well before COVID-19 . Reported revenue increases may also not be enough for the art form.

“Sales and revenue are only part of an organization’s financial landscape: for many orchestras, recent (ticket) revenue increases do not compensate for inflation and other expense increases,” wrote Andrew Anzel, director of the League of American Orchestras' research center. He added, “Within this national picture, every individual orchestra will have its own unique story to tell.”

Iowa orchestras have approached audience growth with a variety of different strategies, like increasing community engagement initiatives, communicating more through social media and removing barriers to access by providing free tickets to students and other groups.

As the 2024-2025 season begins for many of Iowa's orchestras, some of the state's largest are leaning into the video game “super-genre” (as the Gamer Symphony calls it) for the first time, in hopes of attracting new, and potentially younger, audiences.

The next level: Expanding into pop culture

In April 2025, the Des Moines Symphony will perform Final Symphony: Music From FINAL FANTASY, "lavishly arranged for orchestra into a symphonic poem, a piano concerto and a symphony in three movements.”

It was a clear choice for the new season after the orchestra performed a single piece from The Legend of Zelda in 2023 during a concert celebrating “Heroes and Legends," which primarily featured movie themes.

“I cannot even tell you how many little kids came up to our information table, just like, ‘When is Zelda ?’” said Calla Whipp, the symphony’s director of marketing. “They were so excited about it, and parents were like, ‘Please tell us it's soon, because our child won't stop asking.’”

Cedar Rapids-based Orchestra Iowa will present a set of video game scores from the touring “Video Games Live” in February and the Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra will play “Video Games in Concert” in May.

Some see it as the next step, after orchestras across the country have leaned into other types of media for some of their concerts. The most well-known of these efforts are live film concerts, where the symphony plays the scores of beloved movie franchises like Harry Potter , Star Wars and Indiana Jones while the film plays in the background.

“Video game music is no different than Hollywood music. It's really in-depth,” said Brian Baxter, executive director of the Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra. “There's lots of composers. There's tons of gamers out there. So we're excited to kind of get into a new scene there this year."

Orchestra Iowa Music Director Timothy Hankewich calls video game scores “the new frontier,” but also noted that the expenses, like copyright, for media-based production packages like film, music and video games can run a higher financial risk in a state like Iowa, where the cities are smaller.

“A lot of these film packages are designed for large metropolitan areas, in which a symphony orchestra can perform a particular film three to five times and still draw a pretty good audience,” he said. “In Iowa, that's really hard to do. There's only three million people in this state, and what that means for our particular audience, for us to even break even, we have to virtually sell out two programs, which is a heavy lift for us.”

Scoring symphony awareness

Ultimately, the goal is exposure. Most Iowa orchestras operate by scheduling a near-equal number of “masterworks” (traditional, classical arrangements) and “pops” (popular music) events in their season, and understand that the pops frequently sell better among single-ticket-buying audiences.

For Des Moines Symphony Maestro Joseph Giunta, "We just want to get them in the door." No matter what type of concert brings in a new attendee, he hopes it can eventually open their eyes to what classical music can be.

“I know what it can do for a person. I know that it can create a wonderful sense of creativity,” he said. “When they come to this concert, they're hearing the Des Moines Symphony live. And if there's one or two or three people in that audience that will take that home with them and get interested in classical music of some sort, that's a good day for us.”

Even Barker, whose Gamer Symphony ensemble includes members as young as 15, is thinking of how to attract both new performers and audience. He's already considering how to work more closely with schools. Their next two performances are "Gamer Jazz!," and will include video game songs from Mario , Cuphead and Plants vs. Zombies, performed as jazz arrangements.

“We have to find those games that really capture people and are really popular with, especially, the next generation of gamers," he said.