Why The Nashville Symphony Is Catering To Video Gamers

Next week, hundreds of video gamers — many decked out in costumes — will head to a place where they typically don’t hang out: the Nashville Symphony.

The occasion? A set of gaming-themed concerts that the symphony is putting on to attract this segment of the audience.

The orchestra and chorus will be performing the score from The Legend of Zelda, an epic, high-fantasy gaming series that’s about to celebrate its 30th anniversary. 

“The thing that I think is unique with these shows [is] there’s such identification to the characters and to the storyline,” says Larry Tucker, vice president of artistic administration at the Nashville Symphony.  

Tucker, who is in charge of booking its concerts, is not a Zelda enthusiast himself. But this upcoming show is the symphony’s fourth gaming-themed concert. From a business perspective, it’s quite lucrative, he says.

“This is not that difficult to produce. We know we’re going to sell it out,” he says. And the audience at these shows spend more money on merchandise. “On a normal weekend with a pop show, we do $2,000 to $4,000 worth. This is $13,000, $14,000 in one night.”

The shows also bring in a different audience. At last year’s Zelda concert, 72 percent of ticket-buyers had never been to the symphony before.

Among the newcomers was 19-year-old Julia Williams, who calls herself a big fan of the Zelda games. She’s been playing them since she was little, and her mom bought tickets for her birthday last year. 

“It was so awesome,” she says. “It wasn’t just sitting and listening to the music. They had the screen up, and it played clips from the games.”

The people who come to these shows don’t necessarily become regulars afterward, according to symphony data, but they do come back for more gaming concerts. Williams, who’s now at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, is even driving back to Nashville from college to see the show next week.

This kind of show can seem like a gimmicky way to reach a new demographic, Tucker admits. He doesn’t consider video game scores on the same artistic level as, say, Mozart. But he says there’s a still a good reason to produce these concerts.

“I think the biggest impact a symphony orchestra can have in its community is serving as much of that community as possible. I think from that standpoint, this is very high on that part of our agenda,” he says. “I’m proud that we’re bringing some joy to people. That’s what we’re in business for.”