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FMS FEATURE...

August 10, 2016
Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience
Ramin Djawadi's music to tour U.S., Canada in 2017 by Jon Burlingame

Concept art for the Game of Thrones concert. (HBO/LiveNation)

Concept art for the Game of Thrones concert. (HBO/LiveNation)

HOLLYWOOD—Several hundred Game of Thrones fans were treated to a live performance of their favorite music Monday at the Hollywood Palladium, as Live Nation announced a nationwide concert tour of composer Ramin Djawadi's work for the ultra-popular HBO series.

The tour will launch on Feb. 15 in Kansas City, Mo., and visit a total of 28 cities across North America, in such venues as New York's Madison Square Garden (March 7) and Los Angeles' Forum (March 23). Tickets go on sale Saturday.

Live Nation officials called it "an immersive music and visual experience that will bring the Seven Kingdoms to life on a scale never seen before... a musical journey through the realm, from King's Landing to Winterfell, along the northern stretches of the Kingsroad to The Wall and across the Narrow Sea to Braavos, Meereen and beyond."

Djawadi, the Emmy-nominated composer who wrote the Game of Thrones theme and scored all 60 episodes, was "interviewed" at the event by Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who plays Bran Stark in the series.

He said the idea for a concert tour originated during a music-review session at his studio with executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. "One of them said, 'You know, I would love to hear this live with a full orchestra and choir.' And it went from there. We thought it would be great to see all the special instruments we use – duduk, dulcimers, all these others – on a stage performed by real musicians.

"It's a very emotional, very dramatic show," Djawadi added. "We have character themes, themes for different houses and different plots. It will be nice to hear musicians play those themes and remind us of some of the characters we have lost throughout the seasons.

"We'll prepare a best-of," the composer added. "There's a lot to material to draw from," he said, citing such fan favorites as "Mhysa" (from season 3), "The Children" (from season 4) and "Light of the Seven" (from season 6).

As for staging, Djawadi said the Live Nation team has designed a 360-degree stage to assure "there won't be a bad seat in the house. It will be a mixture of digital technology and organic elements, a nice blend between LED screens and special stage designs."

Prior to the announcement, the USC Marching Band marched into the Palladium parking lot playing the Game of Thrones theme prior to the announcement. Afterwards, Stephen Coleman conducted a 35-piece orchestra in a 13-minute suite of Game of Thrones themes that had the crowd cheering.

"For seven years, Ramin has been blowing our mind with his music's force, subtlety and endless inventiveness," creators and executive producers Benioff and Weiss said in a statement. "The Game of Thrones Concert Experience will be unique in the history of concert tours, an eye-popping, ear-splitting, phantasmagoric blend of the show's visuals and Ramin's powerful compositions. We are more excited for it than anyone."

The tour will help satisfy Game of Thrones fans during the year-long wait for Season 7. New episodes are not expected to air until mid-2017.

©2016 Jon Burlingame
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