Yoko Shimomura - Legacy

Legacy

After composing soundtracks to over 35 different games, Shimomura has become one of the biggest names in video game composition, and has been described as "the most famous female video game music composer in the world". In March 2008, Shimomura's best works compilation album Drammatica: The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura was released containing her compositions from Kingdom Hearts and other games in a full orchestrated score. It includes music from Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Live A Live, Kingdom Hearts, Front Mission, Legend of Mana, and Heroes of Mana; Shimomura has stated that she chose music that was popular among fans and well-suited for orchestration, but had never been performed by an orchestra. In a 2008 interview with Music4Games regarding the project, Shimomura commented that with the sheet music generated for the project, she would be interested in pursuing a live performance of Drammatica for fans if the opportunity arose. On March 19, 2009 that wish was realized when it was announced that Arnie Roth would conduct the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the concert Sinfonia Drammatica in the Stockholm Concert Hall, which would combine music from the album with performances of Chris Hülsbeck's Symphonic Shades concert. The concert took place on August 4, 2009. On March 27, 2007 Shimomura released her first non-video game album, Murmur, an album of vocal songs sung by Chata.

Music written by Yoko Shimomura for Kingdom Hearts made up one fourth of the music of the Symphonic Fantasies concerts in September 2009 which were produced by the creators of the Symphonic Game Music Concert series and conducted by Arnie Roth. Legend of Mana's title theme was also performed by the Australian Eminence Symphony Orchestra for its classical gaming music concert A Night in Fantasia 2007.

Music from the original soundtrack of Legend of Mana has been arranged for the piano and published by DOREMI Music Publishing. Two compilation books of music from the series have also been published as Seiken Densetsu Best Collection Piano Solo Sheet Music first and second editions, with the second including Shimomura's tracks from Legend of Mana. All songs in each book have been rewritten by Asako Niwa as beginning to intermediate level piano solos, though they are meant to sound as much like the originals as possible. Additionally, piano sheet music from Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II has been published as music books by Yamaha Music Media.