Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour | 02.08.25, 8:00pm | The Fabulous Fox, 527 N Grand Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63103 | All ages | $53.50–$183.50
This Saturday, February 8th, the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Orchestra will bring its multimedia concert experience to the Fabulous Fox. The concert features music from the acclaimed 2024 video game Final Fantasy Rebirth, arranged for orchestra by the father-son team of Arnie and Eric Roth.
Both Roths have conducted many of the world’s most renowned orchestras through the work of their production company, AWR Music Productions. They also have a long-standing professional relationship with Japanese video game developer Square Enix and the music of their most iconic series, Final Fantasy, in particular. Arnie Roth directs the Distant Worlds travelling concert series, which features orchestral arrangements of some of the most beloved pieces from the long-running franchise, and Eric Roth directs its chamber ensemble companion series, A New World. Eric Roth has also directed orchestral tours for other Square Enix series, most recently directing the NieR orchestra world tour.
In advance of the Rebirth orchestra’s upcoming performance at the Fox theater, we spoke with Eric Roth to ask him about his experiences bringing the music of Final Fantasy to audiences around the world.
The Arts STL: Thank you for speaking with us, Mr. Roth! We’re very excited for the concert. I saw Distant Worlds when it was in St. Louis two years ago and it was one of my favorite performances I’ve seen at the Fox. Am I correct that you’re between tour dates at the moment?
Eric Roth: Yes, our most recent performance for the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth orchestra world tourwas in Cleveland on January 18th. Before that, I was performing in Korea with the NieR orchestra concert, but those are the last two shows I’ve done in 2025.
Was the NieR orchestra also touring in North America before the Rebirth tour dates? I would love to catch a performance of that if you have plans to tour it again in the future, I dearly love the score for the NieR games as well.
There were a lot of North American concerts [for NieR] in 2024, but the concert in Korea was one of the last things that was part of that tour. I love it too, I hope sincerely that it’s coming around for more and more. Let’s hope for that!
On that note, I was going to start by asking about your history of collaboration with Square Enix. I know you’ve directed many concert tours with them in the past, going back to the New World chamber ensemble, and then more recently with Distant Worlds, NieR, and the Rebirth concert series. Can you describe how your relationship with Square Enix started?
Well, thanks, I’d be happy to. But I want to make sure I clarified, if you don’t mind, that I’m not the director of Distant Worlds. I’m the associate music director, technically. That’s my father, Arnie, who does Distant Worlds. The other things you said were absolutely on the money, I’m the director of A New World, and I’ve done the bulk of the NieR orchestra concert tour.
Our relationship with Square goes all the way back to my father working on different Final Fantasy music live orchestra productions, directly with [Final Fantasy composer] Nobuo Uematsu and Square Enix back then, in the early aughts.
I think it was around when More Friends was released [Final Fantasy orchestral concert conducted by Arnie Roth in 2005], which was another one of those earlier projects, that Nobuo and my father started discussing the possibility of an ongoing orchestra production that tours in lots of places to perform the music of Final Fantasy. That’s how Distant Worlds started, which was the opening of an ongoing relationship, rather than arranging performances for special events. And from there, our relationship just blossomed.
My original involvement with Distant Worlds was support with orchestrations, arranging, things like that. We eventually built out the other Final Fantasy production, the smaller one, A New World. And our relationship with [Square Enix] keeps on growing and developing. I think it’s one of the, if not the most important, professional relationships, we’ve had. And I’m speaking not only for our business, but, for my father and I, also for our careers. I think that’s a very safe thing to say. It’s led us to so many wonderful places and to being part of wonderful communities, with the different game series and people who love the music.
Now, prior to your professional experience working on these concerts, were you familiar with the scores for the Final Fantasy games? What was your introduction to Final Fantasy or video game music in general like?
As to whether I dug Final Fantasy music specifically, the short answer is yes, but it wasn’t like my career ambition [to orchestrate music for Final Fantasy]. Even back from childhood I remember feeling like I didn’t care where the music came from, that there is no special place of origin for great music, it can come from anywhere. Hanging out with friends and digging music and video games seemed very normal to me.
Did you play any of the Final Fantasy games growing up?
I did, but again, I’ve been all about the music. I would rather let my good friend play and beat the boss rather than me, you know? Because I’d rather enjoy how cool it looks, and how cool it sounds, the story, the characters, all these things that were more of my disposition coming up. I was never a great gamer, I was more of a good friend!
Sure, I can definitely appreciate that. Final Fantasy games in particular can be quite a time commitment, so the main way that I interface with them is by listening to their scores. If you’ve played the game and are familiar with the story, then you have the emotional context for the music as well, but the soundtrack doesn’t necessarily have to be attached to its original medium to appreciate it as a work of music.
Well, I think that’s true, but I also think there are great benefits and pleasures of being programmatic music, right? Program music that’s going with this particular medium. And some of the greatest benefits are the community, and that’s not just me gushing about the audience, but their relationship with the music. When people come to these concerts, many of them already have a deep relationship with this music, whether it’s through plot points, or reflection on their own history, or relationships with other gamers, or attending other concerts. It’s a wonderful benefit of being part of the community, and having the music, having that origin point. Forgive me for being a little long-winded about it, I can talk about this subject all day!
No need to apologize, that’s why I’m happy to be speaking with you! It’s very fascinating to get that insight from an arranger and composer, and someone that is in the unique position of creating performances for a community that exists independent of the music itself.
Let’s move on to discussing the program for the Rebirth concert specifically. The program for Rebirth, being focused on music from that particular game, covers different music from Final Fantasy VII than what was being performed at the Distant Worlds concerts. Can you contrast your experiences with the Rebirth concerts from the previous concerts that you’ve done with Final Fantasy music?
I’d be happy to. There are a few things that stick out to me about the Rebirth orchestra concert. One is how intense and demanding it is, and I don’t just mean for the musicians. It’s a lot of music! Not that it’s too long, I just mean that a lot of information and, I’ll say story, in a loose kind of way, is built into this program. I think a little more overtly than some other concerts, where they’re more designed as highlights.
I think those aspects of the Rebirth orchestra concert are a little on the unusual side, and make it a really special experience in its own right, different from other video game concerts or orchestra concerts in general. Rebirth is the second installment in a trilogy, and I think this happens a lot, is that the second one is really intense, with lots of ambiguity and rising action leading to third reel stuff, right?
Now that you’ve described that too, I was looking at the program for the concert, and it does appear that the music is arranged in the sequence of events in Rebirth’s story.
I don’t want to get too specific, but we’ve done a concert a lot of times at this point, so we can’t be spoiling too much, right?
My understanding is that the primary composers for Rebirth’s soundtrack are Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu. Did you work with them closely when arranging music for the concert?
Well, it’s true that Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu were the composers who did the bulk of the music, I think that’s probably the most accurate way to describe it, on this program and the Rebirth game. But I think that many of these themes come from Uematsu-san’s original music, and that’s actually part of what’s fascinating about what Suzuki and Hamauzu have done where they’ve extrapolated out other fascinating musical constructions that really do build on themes that Uematsu created in fascinating, and I’ll even say “nutritious” ways at times!
But I have worked directly with Suzuki-san and Hamauzu-san. Masashi Hamauzu and I have been working together for a much longer time than Suzuki-san, who’s also lovely, and, it’s been a great privilege and learning experience getting to interact with these very formidable musicians over the years, and especially in working situations where we have the shared goal of bringing this music to the community in great shared experiences.
I haven’t listened to all of the Rebirth soundtrack yet, but I did listen to the score for the first Remake game, and what struck me certainly was how much work they put into reinterpreting and reimagining Uematsu’s original score. There were pieces that were orchestral, some themes that were turned into rave music, reggae, rock. There was a lot of variety to it, and I imagine that is reflected in the program for the Rebirth concert as well.
I agree fully, I think the variety stands out to me also, and like you’re saying, variety of styles, not just a variety of moods, but actually pointing at different musical heritages, and things of that nature. Which is cool, it makes for an enjoyable concert when you’re going to a lot of different places for expression.
And not to preempt what’s on the program or how your arrangement will sound with an orchestra performing it, but I know, for example, there’s a bossa nova piece [the theme for Costa del Sol], and there’s a military march. There’s just a great variety in the score and I’m sure that is compelling not only to arrange, but to listen to as an audience.
This is sort of a broad question, and maybe you can comment specifically on your experiences with the Rebirth tour, but could you walk us through what a day is like in a traveling orchestra production? How demanding are the logistics for this production compared to previous tours you’ve worked on?
You know, these wars are won and lost in pre-production, that is the wisdom I’ve learned from experience! We’ve been doing the show a lot of times already since August, and the result [is] we did a lot of that legwork already, so there’s not that much before the actual, individual show. Musicians will get music with lots of time beforehand so that they can prepare individually, but really, there’s not a lot of time before the performance where there will be a lot of on-the-ground rehearsal with the local musicians.
Load-in of the equipment and things like that—this is stuff that you have to do pretty tight in the showbiz way. But you’re right that there’s a lot of work that goes into the production, it’s just that most of it is pre-production before the first show of the tour. There can be really intense periods where you’re doing tight turnarounds and travel, trying to make the schedule actually fit. And then there are times where you don’t have anything after a show for the next three weeks.
We have a ton of local people involved in the production, as opposed to say a touring Broadway production, where they’re moving around a lot of people. So it’s a different calculus, shall we say. We work with different orchestras in different cities, so the orchestra itself is not travelling as part of this production. The musicians in St. Louis are from a group that works regularly at the Fox Theatre, and I know from having worked with the Fox previously they are very fine musicians in St. Louis.
That makes sense, and I am sure it makes the tour go much more smoothly. Having to arrange travel for a hundred-person orchestra sounds rather logistically difficult!
From a showbiz standpoint, what we do with our productions, where we come in and we rehearse a pickup orchestra a sitting name orchestra [e.g., the New York Philharmonic], it used to be something that happened a lot in show business. But in this day and age, that approach is not as common, so we stand out a little bit more in that way.
Now I understand you and your father have been business partners for many years as part of your production company [AWR Music Productions]. To close with, I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about your professional relationship with your father [Arnie Roth]?
I’m very proud to get asked about it, because as far as I’m concerned, the guy’s a legend in show business, and I’ve admired him a lot since I’ve been a little kid. Some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories are getting close to music, and that’s through him. I had an incredibly privileged childhood—I’m talking about in this specific way, you know, I’m not saying it’s the only way, but that’s what I’m talking about right now. The incredible privilege of being around live music and professional musicians, and I just thought it was the coolest thing and I wanted to be close to it.
Fast forwarding to the present, our skillsets and our paths are really different, even though we have a lot of overlapping things that we do. So it’s been fascinating to learn that we’re so complimentary, doing this business together over time in these professional ways. It’s really made us stronger as a business, and I think as a company.
I feel very fortunate—experience tells me that there have got to be wonderful musicians that we all miss out on because they don’t have the opportunity like I did, to see it in front of me as a child, to meet people who actually do it, and live and eat by playing instruments or writing music or working in a recording studio. I have to go there and remember that valuable lesson of how fortunate I am, and how important it is for all of us to make sure that people get the opportunity to get connected with music.
And it’s not for just for their good, it’s for all of our goods. Forgive me for getting a little soapbox-y about it, but I have made a little bit of a promise to myself that when I talk about my privileged upbringing, I talk about how that kind of opportunity is what’s missing for so many people. And we all miss out when we don’t get to experience what they can cook up. | David von Nordheim
The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth orchestra will perform at the Fabulous Fox on Saturday, February 8th at 8PM. Tickets can be purchased from the Fox theater’s website.
