With eight members, nine songs and no conductor, the video game ensemble held their first concert.
The concert took place in the Alumni Recital Hall on April 18, 2025, starting at 7 p.m. and lasting for about 45 minutes.
The process of choosing songs really depended on what the ensemble had access to without violating copyright laws. A vote from the members determined what songs they were to play, and they were arranged by the students in the first few weeks of the semester to be able to play for the concert.
The songs that were played were selections from games, including “Undertale,” “Super Mario Odyssey,” “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” “Omori” and “Kingdom Hearts II.”
Some songs had all of the members performing, but most of them had only some of the members on stage. For the song “Duet” from the 2020 video game “Omori,” only first-year Matthew Derouin and Associate Professor and Coordinator of Keyboard Studies Christina Wright-Ivanova, the faculty mentor for the ensemble, accompanied each other.
Some of the students in the ensemble also played multiple instruments. While Derouin has played the clarinet for about eight years, he also played the oboe and keyboard organ for a couple of songs, instruments he said he just learned to play this semester.
While the Ensemble originally planned to perform ten songs, it ended up being nine due to copyright issues, although Derouin said he hopes that will not be as much of a problem in the future.
“During the following semesters, we definitely plan to do more,” Derouin said. “We plan to get licenses to form bigger, better things from some bigger companies, and we’re going to have more people, so it’ll be a little bit better.”
Wright-Ivanova talked about how this ensemble was a first for Keene State, to her knowledge. While vocal students have come together to make their own groups on campus, the video game ensemble may have been the first instrumental group to come together outside of the curriculum and it was established and led by first-years.
“What makes this so special is that this is the first time that I know of that a student instrumental group has come together to do something that they really want to do outside of class,” Wright-Ivanova said. “It’s just really great that there are so many students who are interested in this music and want to feature it and make it well-known.”
While Wright-Ivanova did not have a video game ensemble when she was in college, she reflected this group as “a generational push towards music that is very popular.”
“Any time you have a group of students who comes together on their own volition to do something is really something that should be supported because it means there’s a movement in that generation of people that’s excited about an art form,” Wright-Ivanova said.
She also reflected on the importance of playing this type of music because it has classical foundations. She talked about how what they were doing connected to some of the programs that the music department has, such as the music composition and music tech programs while dealing with the complexities of copyright laws, rehearsing and performing.
“We heard tonight in the concert how many little things they will improve on for next time, and yet the excitement was there,” Wright-Ivanova said. “The passion and the drive and the fact that they rehearsed and put this whole thing together by themselves without any curriculum is really exciting.”
Wright-Ivanova reflected on her excitement to see the ensemble grow into becoming a formal concert and flourish out of its beginning stages and grow with the popularity of the music form itself. With the uniqueness of the ensemble, she hopes it will bring more people to Keene State, especially with the steady enrollment rates the music department has been seeing.
While the process of arranging all of the songs was “stressful,” according to Derouin, he said the concert was incredible for what it was.
“It’s all about having fun,” Derouin said. “I feel like we had a lot of fun tonight.”
Hayley Doda can be contacted at
hayley@kscequinox.com
