The people gathered in a room at the George Sherman Union on a recent weeknight to hear the Videri String Quartet weren’t your typical classical music audience. The small, mostly male crowd, dressed in hoodies and jeans, listened attentively, occasionally cheering in recognition as the four classically trained musicians played.
Big fans of Mozart and Haydn? No. The students—all members of the BU Video Game Society (BUVGS)—were listening to music from Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda and Bioshock Infinite.
The Videri’s repertoire is almost exclusively video game music, and this evening was a warm-up for the group’s performance at the BUVGS’s Day of the Devs convention on Sunday, March 29, at the GSU. Showcasing the local digital and tabletop game development scene, the free event will bring together the work of more than 50 passionate developers, such as recent PAX East exhibitors Lay Waste Games, Zephyr Workshop, Ape Law, and Fire Hose Games. It will also feature the Videri, alone and in its first collaboration with the Berklee College of Music’s Video Game Music Choir.
“I’m not that much of a gamer myself,” confessed Videri violinist Michael Hustedde (CFA’13,’15). “I played when I was an adolescent, but as I grew older I drifted away. But those games that I played when I was growing up—Halo, Zelda, Super Mario—the music has stayed with me. I remember those tracks vividly.”
In addition to Hustedde, quartet members are Lizzie Jones on violin, Roselie Samter on viola, and Jeremiah Barcus on cello.
In fact, with the exception of Barcus, none of the musicians is much of a gamer, a fact that became something of a punch line during the evening. Jones introduced a pair of tracks from the game Kingdom Heart, composed by Yoko Shimomura and arranged as a single piece for the quartet by Chelsea Treglia. Jones pointed out that the first came from “that infamous opening scene that you don’t want to hit ‘start’ because it’s so beautiful” and that the other arrives at the end after you beat the game.
“I still haven’t beaten it,” she added.
“So this is new for you,” Samter replied, deadpan.
“Burn!” said Hustedde to general laughter.
“The level at which people connect to this music is ridiculous,” says Videri founder Samter a few days later in a bare-bones CFA rehearsal room looking out on the Mass Pike, where the group was practicing. “People love it, and kids love it; it’s something that they know.
“String quartets, that’s the music I love, and I want to share that with everyone,” she says. “Playing this type of music has allowed me to get other people really excited about something that I’m excited about. It’s a way to hook them in.”
The music is also fun and challenging to play, with shifts of dynamics and mood as fast-paced as the games themselves.
“A lot of people—musicians and gamers alike—don’t realize the seriousness of the music, the quality of the compositions,” Hustedde says. “I’ve told a couple of friends that I play in this video game quartet, and I can see their instant reactions: ‘Oh, really.’”
The quartet got its start in 2012, after Samter’s friend Jeff Williams, composer for the game-centric internet series Red Vs. Blue, suggested she put together a video game quartet to play backup and also perform as the opening act for a concert he was giving in Austin, Tex. They had met when both were playing in the Boston-based Video Game Orchestra. Samter recruited a quartet, the show was a success, and the audience grew from there.
Samter is the only original member remaining. She and Jones, 27, are Boston Conservatory graduates, and while both still have day jobs, more and more they’re playing music professionally. Barcus, 23, is a current Boston Conservatory student.
Hustedde says people don’t understand the high quality of video game music.
Watching Itzhak Perlman on Sesame Street
Hustedde says he was four when first became interested in the violin. “I was doing my usual after-school routine—eating a snack and watching Sesame Street, when Itzhak Perlman came on the program,” he says. “I remember being really intrigued by this ‘violin’ thing and its sweet sound.”
He petitioned his parents for lessons, and they told him he could start when he was five, if he was still interested. He was. By high school, he knew he wanted to pursue music in college, and he came to BU specifically to study with Bayla Keyes, a College of Fine Arts associate professor of music.
“I met her at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, a fantastic summer music program for high schoolers in the Berkshires,” he says. “She was leading a master class for the quartet I was playing in during the program, and I remember being really inspired by her musical and technical ideas.”
He auditioned and was accepted to BU, earning an undergraduate degree in violin performance. He stayed on to earn a master’s degree and now works with Dana Mazurkevich, a CFA adjunct associate professor of music. “I’m so grateful for Bayla’s and Dana’s guidance and support,” he says. “I wouldn’t be nearly the musician I am today without their help.”
A difficult balancing act is required of music performance students, he says. “You have to practice hours per day by yourself, prepare for your lessons every week, and perform solo recitals, but you also want to take gigs, auditions, and teaching opportunities outside of school so you may be able to eventually make some sort of living when you graduate.”
Hustedde says his time management skills have definitely improved since he was a freshman. “I’m sure I did too much practicing with too little thought. Sometimes less is more,” he says. “Now, I try to get some personal practicing out of the way in the morning. I know that for me, bleary-eyed practicing in the morning is more effective than bleary-eye practicing late at night. I’m usually just thinking about sleeping or watching basketball by that time anyway.”
According to the quartet’s website, Videri’s “core artistic objectives are to explore ways in which video game music connects with its listeners, to celebrate the dynamic link between music and storytelling, and to make classical music more accessible to children and young adults by exposing them to popular video game scores rooted in classical music traditions.”
In just a couple of years, the quartet has made a name for itself in the video game industry, and has been invited to perform at conventions, award shows, and promotional events in New York and California. Game composers have begun suggesting and even arranging their own music for the group’s repertoire. But despite their release of a CD, Portals, in 2013, Videri isn’t exactly rolling in dough, although an Indiegogo campaign pretty much paid the four musicians’ airfare to a recent gig in San Francisco
“Right now we’re just trying to meet other people in the industry,” says Barcus, as the others nod agreement. “I want to work with people, and not necessarily for the money.”
“The composers love what we do,” Samter says. “They really appreciate that we’re taking it seriously.”
Custom arrangements are often necessary, too, because game composers, once limited to low-fi synthesizers, can now use any instruments they want. “They say, ‘Hey, let’s just use a ton of cellos,’” Jones says with a laugh.
“And they can get away with that because it’s not written to be a performance piece,” says Samter. “When you write for an orchestra, you write for a standing, living group. When you’re writing video game music, it’s: what sound do I want, what color are we going for?”
Hustedde also plays in the Denovo Quartet, a group of CFA School of Music graduate students, which focuses on classical repertoire.
“It’s actually a perfect balance—I get to play some of the all-time great quartet repertoire with Denovo and then play fascinating new video game music with Videri,” he says.
The Videri String Quartet will perform at the BU Video Game Society’s Day of the Devs Convention this Sunday, March 29, at 5 p.m., in the George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Ave., second floor. The event is free and open to the public. You can see and hear a selection of Videri performances on the group’s YouTube channel.