Check Out This Expansive Breath of the Wild Concert From Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo
Posted on June 28 2023 by Sean Gadus
Breath of the Wild has one of the most expansive and diverse soundtrack in the franchise’s history. The official release of the game’s full soundtrack (including the DLC) is spread across five CDs. The composers for the game (Manaka Kataoka, Hajime Wakai, and Yasuaki Iwata) did a wonderful job of honoring and updating classic Zelda songs for this new adventure, while also providing a wealth of new music that has delighted fans across the world.
This incredible concert by Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo showcases the music featured in Breath of the Wild. Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo is an amateur orchestra that focuses on video game, animation, and pop music. The ensemble’s first concert was held on April 22nd, and it was focused exclusively on Breath of the Wild. In addition to their extensive work with the score for Breath of the Wild, Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo has created covers of music from other video games including the Final Fantasy series, Octopath Traveler II, Okami, Kingdom Hearts, and many more.
Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo’s Breath of the Wild concert is broken into three parts, and further divided into fifteen movements. Each movement has a theme (“Great Plateau”), and each movement contains arrangements of thematically linked songs from across the game’s expansive soundtrack. Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo posted a full program on Google Drives, and they also timestamped each movement in the video’s description so listeners can follow along. In addition to the main movements, the game also includes an opening track as well as two encore songs. The opening track is the “Nintendo Switch Presentation 2017 Trailer”; a song that is held in high esteem by many fans. The encore performances are focused on The Champions’ Ballad DLC, and music for Tears of the Kingdom.
Overall, this concert is an impressive achievement that captures the beauty and grandeur of Breath of the Wild‘s soundtrack. It is clear that Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo put a great deal of thought and care into developing the different movements, and it is fascinating to see how the musicians organized Breath of the Wild‘s complex and expansive soundtrack. The concert clocks in at an impressive 1 hour and 55 minutes, and the orchestra manages to tell the game’s full story in its runtime. One of the only things that Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo does not include are the music from the different memories that the player must find scattered across Hyrule, though the concert does include an arrangement of “Zelda’s Awakening,” which is the final memory found just outside of Fort Hateno.
If you are interested in listening to more music from Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo, I would recommend their arrangement of “Summer” by Joe Hisaishi, their arrangement of Donkey Kong Country 2‘s “Stickerbrush Symphony” by David Wise, and “Reset” from Okami.
What do you think of this Breath of the Wild concert by Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo? What other Zelda games would you like to to them cover? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Ensemble G.A.P. Tokyo
Sean Gadus is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon. His first Zelda game was Ocarina of Time, and he loves all of the 3D Zelda games from 1998-2011. The final battle of Tears of the Kingdom is one of his favorite final battles in the entire series. He wants to help build a kinder, more compassionate world. You can check out his other written work at The-Artifice.com.
