GameCity5

Nottingham, 08/09/2010 – GameCity, the World’s best-loved videogames festival, today announced the details of the hugely anticipated James Hannigan concert and retrospective, part of the upcoming festival, GameCity5, running from October 26-30th. The concert will take place in St Mary’s Church, Lace Street on Thursday 28th October, starting at 7:30pm.

Bringing a musical note to GameCity5, World-renowned, award-winning composer James Hannigan will host an evening retrospective of his work at the 14th Century St Mary’s Church in the heart of Nottingham’s Lace Market, featuring the Pinewood Singers and conductor Allan Wilson.

During an insightful and incisive on-stage conversation with acclaimed Audio Consultant John Broomhall, Hannigan will be interspersing his answers with process demonstrations of how his work is created. The finale of the event will feature the World Premiere performance of extracts from Hannigan’s newest score, EA’s magical adventure ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 – the videogame.

EA UK PR Director Simon Smith-Wright said, "This isn't a concert of 'videogame' music, to call it that marginalises it. This is a concert of exceptional music and an insight into its creation, taking place in the extraordinary surroundings of a candle-lit 14th Century Church. EA are hugely proud of the work James has done with us over his career so far, and look forward to exploring and celebrating his work at GameCity."

GameCity Director Iain Simons said, “We're delighted to be able to welcome James to GameCity for this unique retrospective and performance event. One of the core missions of the festival is to celebrate and explore contemporary creativity, so to be able to look back over James' canon whilst also premiering his latest amazing work is a particular privilege."

James Hannigan is an award-winning composer who has written scores for many games, including Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 Commander’s Challenge, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, and several entries into the Harry Potter videogames series, including Order of the Phoenix, Half Blood Prince and now Deathly Hallows.

Conductor Allan Wilson has worked on a number of videogame scores, including every entry from the Harry Potter series, among others.

The James Hannigan concert is just one part of GameCity5, the yearly festival from GameCity that explores and celebrates videogames culture. For the full details on the festival line-up, go to www.gamecity.org

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NOTES TO EDITOR

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*GameCityNights is a series of after-dark monthly events that brings together developers, students and players in a celebration and exploration of videogame culture - with prizes. Every month a brilliant headline speaker will be making their way to Nottingham to share their thoughts, passions and give a unique insight into their work.

GameCity is what a videogame festival should be.

The Centre for Contemporary Play is a research centre based at Nottingham Trent University which pioneers innovative thinking through new partnerships. Since 2008 it has worked with a variety of leading organisations from the commercial and public sector to deliver major research and inclusion projects. These include the ITAG conference, the GameCity videogame festival and the National Videogame Archive - a unique collaboration with the National Media Museum.

Driven by leading thinking at NTU, the Centre for Contemporary Play continues to create radical and innovative projects in the academic and public engagement space.

Gamecity’s aim is to bring together developers and the public to explore and celebrate videogames and videogames culture, with a particular focus on students. We attract the best speakers in the world, offer up-and-coming artists and developers a platform for their games and create totally unique events.

Some of GameCity’s greatest hits include a world-record breaking zombie gathering, Keita Takahashi designing a children’s playground and Masaya Matsuura, Lorne Lanning, Alexey Pajitnov and Media Molecule having headlined.

We’ve worked alongside some of the most prominent names in gaming, including; Warner Bros, TTGames, Crytek, Activision, Namco Bandai, SCEE, Xbox, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Freestyle Games, David Braben, Media Molecule, Splash Damage, Harmonix, Rare, Denki, Monumental Games, Midway, Zoe Mode, ThatGameCompany, Nana-on-Sha and lots more.

Going way beyond just playing games, GameCity offers other new ways for people to interact with videogame culture. Art exhibitions, director commentaries, playground building, live recreations of videogames, gigs, gong-shows, three World Records, arcade trails, club nights – nothing is off limits for this most radical of videogame festivals.

Don’t just take our word for it, see what others have said after working with us,

GameCity looks poised to become our industry’s ?rst Sundance. A truly unique approach for hosting a game festival that seems long overdue.

Lorne Lanning, Oddworld Inhabitants

GameCity is unique. Any games festival that can reunite industry legends, lead to a Japanese game developer designing a playground, and evoke religious sentiments in a shopping centre is doing something very right for sure.

Edge Magazine

The year’s most inventively programmed new arts festival

The Times