For Seattle’s video game community — and any Sonic the Hedgehog fans — 2024 will open with a bang, as the Sonic Symphony is coming to town.
On Jan. 4-5, a full rock band and orchestra will put on a live performance of an assortment of fan-favorite music from the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series.
The Sonic Symphony live show began its run in September with a live show in London, and since then, has played in Paris, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Boston, and Chicago, with upcoming shows in San Antonio and Atlanta. The Symphony’s new year opens in Seattle, with another Pacific Northwest show scheduled at Portland’s Schnitzer Auditorium on March 29.
The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2021. Since its start as a first-party release by Sega for its Genesis console, Sonic has spread out from games to comics, cartoons, toys, and two live-action films, with a third movie planned for next year.
A significant amount of Sonic’s success as a franchise can be attributed to the games’ music. The CD-ROM era of gaming gave developers the opportunity to overhaul game sound design, and Sonic immediately leaned into that opportunity in a way that many of its peers didn’t.
Ever since, Sonic has retained a trademark style to its music, which owes more to rock, funk, and rap music, including vocal tracks, than the jazzy, child-friendly instrumental loops of something like a Super Mario. Every new Sonic game usually adds at least one earworm to the series’ musical history, such as Sonic Adventure 2’s “Live and Learn” and “Escape from the City.”
That’s much of what’s driving the Sonic Symphony show, which began as an impromptu event at the San Diego Comic Con.
“[Sega] had a room at SDCC and wanted to do something music-related,” said Shota Nakama, the tour’s producer and one of its touring guitarists, in an interview with GeekWire. “I’d been working with Sega since 2016 through a mutual friend, who is now their chief branding officer, so they turned to me.”
That short-notice performance, when Nakama’s band played music from the Sonic series for the convention’s attendees, led to Nakama putting together a special online concert for Sonic’s 30th anniversary in June 2021.
“That was the turning point,” Nakama said. “That was during COVID time, so we had to remotely arrange everything, and it blew up online.” The Sonic Symphony tour spun out of that initial online performance.
Nakama is also the director at Boston-based music and production company soundtrec, one of the organizers of the Sonic Symphony tour. He was born and raised in Okinawa, Japan, but much of his education in music happened in Washington state, which makes the Seattle stop for the Sonic Symphony a sort of homecoming for Nakama.
“When I was 18, I came to Pierce College in Lakewood,” Nakama told GeekWire. “I jumped onto a ship and went… I knew it was the right place for me.”
Nakama came to Washington with no money and no knowledge of English. He spent three years at Pierce, from 2000 to 2003, learning about jazz, singing, and music theory. In his off-time, he joined a band that covered “’80s classic rock,” playing in biker bars from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., while also hitting every session night at Jazzbones in Tacoma.
“Every moment was so beautiful,” Nakama said. “It made me a better musician overall.”
Nakama will play with the touring Sonic Symphony band for the Seattle show, with an as-yet-unnamed local orchestra performing alongside them.
The setlist for the Seattle showing of the Sonic Symphony tour includes an orchestral segment with medleys of music from the original Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Mania, and Sonic Frontiers. The vocal performance from the band, backed by the orchestra, features Sonic 2006’s “His World,” “Fist Bump” from Sonic Forces, and Sonic Colors’ “Reach for the Stars.”
Previous performances have featured occasional appearances by special guests, including Sonic composer Senoue and Johnny Gioelli, the co-writer and vocalist for the original version of “Escape from the City.” According to Nakama, it’s likely that one or both will be onstage at the Seattle show.
