Pokemon music plays on symphony stage

Tunes from classic video game will fill Schnitzer hall

Now the second biggest gaming franchise after Mario, both for Nintendo and the world, Pokémon always has thrilled the younger set with its social attributes and competitive aspect, going back nearly 20 years to the first video game that kids played on their Game Boy hand-held consoles.

Portland resident Jeron Moore was one of those kids.

“I actually picked it up when it first came out, with Pokémon Red and Blue in 1996,” Moore says. “It was my first and last Pokémon game for awhile. I was a junior in high school at the time, and I started putting down my Game Boy.

“But it really captured my imagination, definitely part of the pantheon of experiences as a child with the Nintendo titles. It’s very social, encourages fair play, but it’s kind of its own contained world — you can play as a single player. It was just as charming as Mario and Zelda and Star Fox.”

Pokémon, basically a game of fictional characters that humans catch and teach to fight, took off with more video games, animated shows and films, trading card games, comic books and toys. Catching, trading and battling are operative words in Pokémon. And for the first time, the music of Pokémon has been brought to the stage with “Pokémon: Symphonic Evolutions,” courtesy of producer and lead creative Moore and music director Chad Seiter.

The Oregon Symphony plays the music at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway (tickets starting at $40, www.orsymphony.org).

Moore, who teamed with Seiter on a similar symphonic project for Zelda music, admits it’s a bit of a “bait-and-switch” tactic as video games meets symphony. Younger kids go to the symphony, and maybe they enjoy it, and become future symphony-goers.

“We’ll sneak in some culturization, by exchanging something they’re interested in. That’s exciting,” Moore says.

A video screen accompanies the music, and electronics move in and out of the music.

Moore and Seiter are working with Princeton Entertainment of Philadelphia on the project.

“Chad’s the composer, I’m more of the creative producer, the high-level concept guy. I deal with story narrative,” Moore says. “I’m familiar with music, I know enough to be dangerous. Chad and I do mind meld — both being ‘Star Trek’ fans — and we sync up that way.”

The “Pokémon: Symphonic Evolutions” show started at the Pokémon World Championships in Washington, D.C., in August 2014, and has been on tour since then. It’ll be onstage in Portland for the first time; Seiter and Moore brought Zelda here for the Oregon Symphony in 2013.

The music? It may not be as familiar to people as Mario’s music, but it’s fun, with shades of classical music and some influences by James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams.

Susie Benchasil Seiter, Chad Seiter’s wife, guest-conducts for the music.

“All of the ancillary and branched-off extensions of Pokémon all sort of spring forth from the video game,” Moore says. “That’s where we’ve chosen to focus the narrative and musical concept of the show. We take you through the chronology of 20 years of music and moment, fun story points; through all of that because Pokémon has grown up with the Nintendo hand-held gaming console, through five generations of hardware,” from Game Boy to 3DS.

“It’s very colorful and melodic music, whether you’re familiar with Pokémon music or not. The Oregon Symphony is fantastic, and will do a bang-up job of performing it anyway. It’s all written by Junichi Masuda in Japan, the game director and composer for Pokémon games. He’s been with the company and worked on games since the beginning. He wears multiple hats, which is staggering.”

Moore and his partner call Portland home; they live near Providence Park. Moore originally is from Texas and was living in Los Angeles when his partner took a job with Columbia Sportswear and the couple moved to Portland.

He doesn’t consider himself out of the loop from the music scene.

“I work from home pretty much wherever I am,” he says. “I’ve been in the music field, but less so the music industry and more so the film/TV/video game sector, which is driven so much by Internet communication and remote work. It doesn’t matter where I am.”