By Melanie Sosa
I had the opportunity to speak with Gabe Nunag again about his thoughts, the processes of setting up for the concert, and what EVGE plans to do for next quarter.
What were your initial expectations going into the Ghibli concert and March concert?
The main expectation I had that was severely trampled upon, in a good way, was the amount of people who were planning on showing up. We had high-balled around seventy people showing up, but it was over a hundred for both concerts. It was a very pleasant surprise for us. We had gone through [the concerts] a lot quicker than I had initially planned. Overall, I think both concerts went better than I initially anticipated.
How do you feel about your growing audience?
I am excited. It’s a big step up from last year when we had maybe twenty people show up. So, I think it’s very exciting to showcase all of our talent and a bit nerve wracking, because of a much larger expectation to live up to. Each concert that we do sets the precedent for the next. So, from here on out, it’s going to be a lot of grinding and hard work coming from EVGE.
I notice that in between each of the song pieces you give a little information about each piece. Can you go more into detail about how you prepare those notes?
The main reason why I do those little speeches, besides honoring the history of the piece and whoever worked on it originally, was to give my players some rest so I try to talk for as long as I can about the piece itself. I just prepare for that by researching beforehand objective information about the game. A majority of these games I have played before, but in the event that I haven’t, I do my research. I make sure to get the dates correct and the original composers correct. That’s mainly out of respect for the original composer of the piece. And for some of the pieces I’ll input some of my own opinions about the game, the piece itself, or about the writing process. Instead of just the music speaking for itself, I wanted to create a bit of a celebratory atmosphere of a relationship between us and the audience to hopefully keep people supporting us.
How do you coordinate the costumes of your players?
We have a very simple dress code; black, white, or gray formal, or players can cosplay. A full cosplay, not just a graphic design t-shirt. Any accessories are okay since they are wearing formal wear. This was something I decided to do because last year I had someone come in a full princess Zelda cosplay and I wanted to continue that trend.
I noticed some equipment for video recordings. What are your plans on sharing your music with others going forward?
We have never done anything like this before. We don’t have anyone who is a major in photography or does photography for a living so we are pretty amateur at it. For these past two concerts, we just been experimenting with raw recordings. Just recording the footage and uploading it post-concert. One of my members, George, has a nice DSLR with a decent audio set-up, so we wanted to get that going. For the Ghibli and the Winter Concert, we’ve just been doing recordings. In the future, maybe not for Spring, but more than likely next year, we wanted to do a live streaming set-up. Hopefully we can get that running.
You seemed surprised at the crowd’s reaction to some games, like Fire Emblem, for example. What are your thoughts on the crowd and their reactions to the concert?
I thought it was neat and it made me feel a lot less nervous. You were there the whole time, so you could tell at the very beginning I was stammering a lot. I think the crowd interaction, trying to get that relationship between us and the audience, is what helped settle my nerves and it made me feel confident overall. It was really nice to see people’s passion and support for what we’re doing.
I heard that it was a last minute decision to play along with the trailer for the last song. Can you talk about how that decision was made?
Yeah, it was literally last minute. We had a dress rehearsal that day at 2:30 and at the end of the dress rehearsal, I think Leo, my tenor sax player, said “We should play this along with the trailer.” So, we did it. We ran it maybe three times at the dress rehearsal and then we were like,“You know what? We’ll try to pull it off at the end of the concert.” And I think it went okay. We want to do more of it in the future too.
What are your overall thoughts, now that the Ghibli and March concerts are done?
Overall, I’m really proud of my players. Many of them I’ve been working for a little over a year now. It’s nice to see their improvement. It’s also great because we’re all hanging out as friends once in a while. The concerts themselves went a lot better than I had hoped for. The majority of that stems from my players. They’re wonderful and none of it would be possible without them. I think, going forward, we have a lot more work to do. We’ve already set a baseline standard for what a performance from us should be. It’s a little bit ambitious, but I’m confident that with enough hard work, as we’ve been doing for the past year now, we’re more than ready to step up our game and provide quality shows for everybody who attends.
What have you learned from these experiences and what do you think it means for the future of EVGE?
I learned a lot from the Ghibli Concert because that was a major performance that we had to set up on our own. The Winter Concert specifically gave me a lot of experience with how to run the concert, once you’re in the concert itself. We didn’t have the Anteater Artists to save me and fill up some time. Going forward, I want to incorporate more honoring of the history of these video games, including more interactions from within my ensemble. Next quarter I do have two of my players, Leo and Nelson, who are going to be arranging some stuff for us. So, I’ll have them speak, instead of speaking on their behalf. Learning how to put on a good show was what I learned from these past two concerts and I hope to continue to put out good work with the rest of my ensemble going forward.
I wanted to talk about your third and final concert for the year. What do you have planned? Will it be a culmination of all the songs you’ve learned before or something new?
As far as we’ve already planned, our final concert will be June 1st. That’s week 9, Saturday of spring quarter. It’s a completely new program minus one or two songs here and there. We are preparing all of this within just spring quarter. We have that precedent set by winter quarter to condense all the work from two quarters down to nine weeks. So, a bit of a grind for us, for me especially having to write a majority of those pieces. I haven’t finalized our list but we are going to be playing pieces from Kiki’s Delivery Service, the Persona series, and more from Kirby, Xenoblade, and Zelda. Those will be different pieces than what we played in the winter and there will possibly be some jazz arrangements as well. Many of my players have been interested in doing jazz compositions. I thought it would be great for me to personally step out of my comfort zone and start arranging those kinds of pieces.
Any shoutouts?
Yeah, for the last two concerts I wanted to thank Anteater Artists and Honsori (Korean Drumming Club), those are two groups who have been around much longer than we have. Without their support, none of these concerts would have been possible. I also wanted to plug again the June 1st concert and I’m opening the doors to anyone who wants to collaborate with us. Feel free to reach out. I can’t guarantee anything because of our tight time frame, but we’ll be more than happy to do something with an anime club or something like that.
Nunag, G. (2024, March 12). Personal Communication [Personal Interview].
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