One UMD orchestra only plays music from games

First published Monday, Dec. 20, 2021 in Stories Beneath the Shell.

Gaming music isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about an orchestra. But that’s exactly what the University of Maryland’s Gamer Symphony Orchestra plays.

“There’s a million orchestras that play Beethoven and a lack of general awareness of the artistry of video game music,” said president Quinn Dang.

Ciara Donegan is the orchestra’s music director. 

“I think for a lot of us, a lot of this music is pretty nostalgic. We might be playing things from games that we played throughout our childhoods,” she said. “It has more of (an) emotional connection than just regular orchestral music might have.”

Rachel Wattanarungsikajorn conducts the orchestra. She was intimated when she first started conducting the orchestra, she said.

“You always get this mindset that everyone’s gonna hate you because everyone’s coming from so many different music backgrounds,” the senior psychology and chemistry double major said.

Wattanarungsikajorn has had many roles in the orchestra — she was the choir director, played violin and piano and guitar. She’s never played a brass instrument so she gets to learn about the instrument while conducting.

“It’s really rewarding and I learn so much more every day,” Wattanarungsikajorn said.

Michelle Eng founded the orchestra in 2005. It was the first college-level orchestra to play exclusively music from games, Dang said, but it wasn’t the last. Gaming orchestras have popped up in Des Moines, Iowa, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Davis, Calif., Rochester, N.Y., Norwalk, Conn., Montclair, N.J., Cambridge, Mass., Seattle and even London.  

This semester, UMD’s orchestra is playing music from Pokemon, Mario, Zelda and Frogger. Donegan’s music committee receives video game music arrangements from students and chooses what pieces to play based on how good the arrangement is and the music’s tone, she said. 

The committee usually selects one or two pieces that are only for the choir, the senior atmospheric and oceanic science major added.

When the university moved to online instruction because of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, the orchestra was forced to cancel its concert. 

It was planning a concert in the fall 2020 semester when the university started teaching some classes in-person. Dang allowed orchestra members to choose whether or not to come back in-person and rehearse in the Memorial Chapel with modified masks and bell covers for wind instruments. 

“We had super super duper reduced rehearsals and really reduced arrangements that were made for who we had coming back,” Dang said. “It was like one instrument or less per section.”

But the fall concert was canceled when the university instituted a sequester-in-place order because of rising COVID-19 cases.

“What I found and what I think other people found from those really small reduced rehearsals is that the point wasn’t really to perform anyway,” Dang said. “It was just to be with people again, and to play music with other people again and see people. For some people, it was the one thing they were doing at all … with people.”

Students who decided to stay online could play virtually through videos that stitched everyone’s performances together. The students stayed engaged with the orchestra through its Discord server, Dang said. 

Now that the university is in-person again, Donegan said, the orchestra is back to where it was before the pandemic. 

“We are back up the number of people we had before COVID, which was kind of a surprise,” she said. She expected that it would take several semesters before the number of orchestra members was back to normal because some members were graduating and the orchestra wasn’t rehearsing in-person. “But we had so many people interested in joining. We already are back up to where we were before COVID, which is kind of amazing.”

The semester hasn’t been without its challenges. The orchestra was scheduled to perform its fall concert at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on Dec. 18 and 19, but postponed it to February 2022 after UMD President Darryll Pines canceled winter commencement and banned indoor dining in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases.

Druhv Srinivasan, a freshman mechanical engineering major, said the orchestra’s atmosphere makes it unique.

“Everyone’s energetic and excited to come to rehearsal,” the percussionist said. “Because it’s video game music, all the music is exciting and relatable and it’s fun to share that with the audience.”