Journey LIVE combines live gameplay of the award-winning video game Journey with a live performance of the game's score, creating a seamless interactive experience.

Join us as the SFCM Pre-College Contemporary Music Ensemble, joined by the Fifth House Ensemble and guest conductor Austin Wintory, perform the score to Journey as a reaction to students playing the game live on a large projection screen at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Featuring elements of cosplay and musical performance, this live play-through offers collaboration between the players, musicians, and the audience.

The Players:
Austin Wintory, conductor
Melissa Snoza, flute
Parker Nelson, horn
Charlene Kluegel, violin
Bruno Silva, viola
Herine Coetzee Koschak, cello
Eric Snoza, double bass
SFCM Pre-College and Collegiate Musicians

About Austin Wintory
Austin Wintory began his obsession with composing back when he was ten years old, when he discovered Jerry Goldsmith’s scores to Patton and A Patch of Blue. After a busy high school career composing for the student orchestras, Austin went on to study at NYU and USC with composers Morten Lauridsen, Charles Fussell, and Erica Muhl. Never satisfied with working in a single medium, Austin has worked in the concert world, film music, video games, and miscellaneous others.

In March 2012, the PlayStation3 game Journey was released, after three years of work. The game instantly became Sony’s fastest-selling PlayStation title, and the soundtrack album debuted on the Billboard charts higher than any original score in gaming history. In December 2012, more history was made when it was announced that Journey had become the first-ever Grammy-nominated videogame score. The score subsequently won an Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences D.I.C.E. award, two British Academy Awards, a Spike TV VGA, and IGN’s “Overall Music of the Year,” five G.A.N.G. Awards and host of others. The score features the Macedonia Radio Symphonic Orchestra and a lineup of top soloists (Audio excerpts available here). Orchestral excerpts, and the stand alone mini-concerto “Woven Variations” have been consistently scheduled for concert performances all over the world since its release.

Beginning humbly as a Kickstarter campaign, Austin’s next major game effort was Stoic Studio’s The Banner Saga, a unique and mature turn-based strategy / RPG hybrid with a dazzling art direction. The score featured the Dallas Wind Symphony, America’s premiere wind ensemble, and an all-star trio of YouTube musicians: Malukah, Peter Hollens and Taylor Davis. The game and soundtrack were released in early 2014 to critical and commercial success; the score earned Austin over a dozen awards and nominations, including his 4th and 5th British Academy Award nominations, and a nomination for the peer-voted ASCAP Composer’s Choice Award for “Best Video Game Score of the Year.” He is currently working with Stoic on The Banner Saga 2, which was announced live, on-stage at The Game Awards in December 2014 to an audience of nearly 2 million people.

Most recently, Austin wrote and produced the score for Ubisoft’s latest blockbuster: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. The music is at its heart a chamber score deeply rooted in 19th century traditions, featuring virtuoso musicians Sandy Cameron and Tina Guo, and an all-star ensemble recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London. The score has been lauded as among the top game scores for 2015 by major industry organizations like GameTrailers, IGN, Movie Music UK and the Hollywood Music in Media Awards.

Austin has also scored nearly 50 feature films, and his first major film score, for the Sundance Film Festival-winning film Captain Abu Raed, was shortlisted for the 2009 Academy Awards for Best Original Score by the LA Times. His next major film, Grace, was also a hit at the Sundance Film Festival. Austin’s score (which featured a wild array of custom-recorded sounds such as babies crying and horse flies, in addition to a large ensemble of clarinets at London’s famed Abbey Road Studios), was also highly lauded, earning a notorious Fangoria Chainsaw Award nomination and being cited by “Visions in Sound” (a popular film scoring radio program) as among the Top 10 Scores for 2010. His most recent films are writer/director Adam Alleca’s Standoff, starring Thomas Jane and Laurence Fishburne, and Amin Matalqa’s The Rendezvous, starring Stana Katic.

Outside of games, Austin also maintains a busy concert composing schedule, with regular appearances throughout the world. Most recently he premiered the commissioned work “This Gaming Life” with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, a theatrical work created in collaboration with the legendary comedians called “Tripod.” Announced in 2016 was also the unveiling of his partnership with the Chicago-based chamber group Fifth House Ensemble, with whom he will tour in a production of “Journey LIVE,” a recreation of the hit PlayStation title, performed interactively live. His chamber music show “Mythos,” combining his own music with other contemporary works, is also touring throughout 2015 and beyond following a successful world premiere in Manhattan at New York Comic Con in 2014. Forthcoming he will also have premieres with the West Michigan Symphony, Colorado Symphony and others.

Passionate about education, Austin is a regular public speaker at schools and events around the world, in addition to pre-concert talks and workshops. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the non-profit Education Through Music – Los Angeles, as well as the Board of Directors for the Society of Composers and Lyricists.

About Patrick O'Malley
Patrick O’Malley (1989) is a composer whose works explore the musical interplay between emotion, color, energy, and landscape. Currently living in Los Angeles, O’Malley grew up in Indiana, where he cultivated an interest in composition from hearing music at the local orchestra, studying piano and double bass, film scores at the movie theater, and even MIDI compositions for videogames being written at the time. His pieces span many of the contemporary mediums for classical music (orchestra, chamber ensembles, vocal music, film scores etc.), and have been performed across the United States as well as in France and Germany. Often when writing a new piece, O’Malley considers the listener’s imagination as much as every other musical element – an admittedly and enjoyably subjective endeavor.

THE GROCERY LIST: Most recently, O’Malley has been recognized and/or performed by organizations including the American Composers Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Next On Grand National Composers Intensive with wild Up, the Society of Composers Inc., The American Prize 1st Place for orchestral music in 2015 (with additional awards in orchestral, chamber, and wind band music in 2014), the Boston New Music Initiative, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award (finalist in 2012, 2014, 2015), and Fulcrum Point New Music Project. He has spent summers as a student at various music festivals, including the Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin Festival, Fresh Inc. Festival, and FUBiS composition course in Berlin. He is gratefully indebted to his private teachers over the years for helping guide his work, the most recent of which include Andrew Norman, Samuel Adler, and Frank Ticheli. O’Malley is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.

About Fifth House Ensemble
The Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble is a versatile and dynamic group praised by the New York Times for its “conviction, authority, and finesse.” Defined by limitless imagination, the ensemble engages curiosity to create unexpected connections with artistic collaborators and audiences of all types, breathing life into repertoire both established and emerging. Over the last decade, the ensemble has engaged theater groups, visual artists, animators, living composers, astronomers, folk musicians and corporate innovators through transformative cross-media performance experiences for audiences of every type.

As part of its 2017-2018 season, Fifth House Ensemble presents a bold new collaboration called Degenerate Art, examining censored and suppressed music of the past along with recorded interviews and an exploration of contemporary graffiti art that challenges authority today. New collaborations with 2015 Grammy-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux and graphic artist Angela Bermúdez explore musical styles unique to American culture, as well as global folk sources that lie far off the beaten path from the typical classical concert. fresh inc all stars features works by composition alumni of the annual fresh inc festival; young composers who are making an impact with fresh new work.

Also this season, Fifth House visits the University of Texas at Austin, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Kenyon College (Gambier, OH) with Journey LIVE, an interactive arrangement for Fifth House of Austin Wintory’s Grammy-nominated score responsive to live game play, and visits The Driehaus Museum, the Eastman School of Music, LiveConnections at World Cafe Live, Ravinia, and the Cleveland Institute of Music for performances, training workshops, and residency activities this season.

Performances in previous seasons include those at Ravinia, Montalvo Arts Center (CA), the Texas Performing Arts, Civic Music Association (IA), Old Town School of Folk Music, WFMT Impromptu, the Chicago Cultural Center, Rush Hour Concerts at St. James, National Sawdust (NY) and the Miller Theatre (NY).

Through the ensemble’s heartfelt social and civic practice work, 5HE has co-created artistic projects with urban neighborhoods, social service organizations, and an agricultural community to spark conversations on issues that matter. Recent projects include Broken Text, a collaboration with Raven Theatre and DJ Searchl1te inspired by multi-week residencies at the Cook County Temporary Youth Detention Center and St. Leonard’s Ministries; Nedudim, an exploration of music and cultural identity in collaboration with Baladino that engages Chicago-based organizations representing Israel, Iran, Germany and Spain, and Harvest, a year-long partnership with DePauw University and the Greencastle, IN community culminating in a Mother’s Day celebration of the people, places, and stories of Putnam County. This season, 5HE partners with Storycatchers Theatre’s Changing Voices Ensemble, a supported employment program for recently released court-involved teens, to develop a new theatrical work based on the youth actors’ own experiences and those of participants in 5HE’s residency programs for homeless or incarcerated youth and adults.

Bringing its signature connective programming from the stage to the classroom, 5HE develops young audiences through curriculum-integrated interactive concerts and residencies for students grades K-12. A member of the Illinois Arts Council’s Arts-in-Education Roster, 5HE has presented performances and residencies at Chicago public schools and the Chicago Cultural Center in partnership with the International Music Foundation, the Chicago Teachers’ Center, Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, and Ravinia’s Reach*Teach*Play program. Programs are customized to the curriculum of each school, with the goals of promoting active listening skills and connecting music to a wide variety of subjects.

As an extension of this work, 5HE enters its second year of partnership with Loyola University’s Center for Urban Research and Learning this season, through which the ensemble is in residence at sites serving at-risk youth and adults including Deborah’s Place, Teen Living Programs, and Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School at the Chicago Temporary Youth Detention Center.

Fifth House also frequently performs for college audiences, including workshops, residencies, and performances at Yale College, Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, Indiana University, Northwestern University, DePaul University, and the Colburn School. In 2012, 5HE launched fresh inc, a one of a kind chamber music festival that brings together composers and instrumentalists for side-by-side performances, receiving creative presentation and entrepreneurship training.

Fifth House is currently an Ensemble in Residence at the Music Institute of Chicago.

For more information, visit www.fifth-house.com