One.
Two.
One, two, three.
(Lively jazz music plays)
My name is Patrick Bartley.
I'm a saxophonist from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
My main work has been in jazz.
My biggest passion has been playing the music
of Japanese video game, anime, and pop music.
I would say the first system that I actually had,
owned myself, was a Sony PlayStation.
So I played like, Spyro the Dragon was like, my first game.
But I also had the privilege of being around
a lot of different other systems
because of, you know, family members or friends.
What? (laughs)
Some of the titles that really stick out to me...
Sonic the Hedgehog was probably just like,
the bread and butter.
(Sonic the Hedgehog music)
A good model of what music and visuals and stuff could be.
So I would think, Sonic, Streets of Rage,
Gran Turismo was big for me.
Tekken, I played a lot of Tekken 2.
That was my first fighting game ever.
Played some Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy X,
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
A lot of those games were a big, big part of me.
Whoa.
Oh, you can't get a shot of me getting beat by a computer!
(laughs)
Video games are kind of a big part of me getting into music.
When I was learning clarinet,
in addition to learning whatever they were teaching me,
I also wanted to learn these songs that I was hearing
that was affecting me,
so I would learn Sonic the Hedgehog, Green Hill Zone.
Put in the background, while it was running,
just like, play my clarinet along to it,
try to figure out the notes.
Whatever seven notes I knew on the clarinet,
let's try to... (laughs)
Use those to learn that music.
At the same time I was playing video games,
I was also watching anime,
so things like Dragon Ball Z.
Dragon Ball Z, yeah!
Dragon Ball Z!
So, I ended up learning a bunch of anime tunes,
I learned a bunch of video game tunes,
and that was a big deal for me,
because I was like, even though it's still just a hobby,
I'm seriously playing this music.
Like, I'm actually taking some time
that what I learned on the saxophone,
and bringing that to this music for people to listen to.
Come on, now.
How y'all doing, black cat?
(clapping and cheering)
And so that was the first kind of aha moment
I think I had in my head of wow,
I get to express myself doing this.
People like listening to jazz
cause it makes them feel sophisticated,
some people say it makes them feel chill, a good mood,
or it's expressive, and it's individual.
But then you put it with the music they grew up with,
like, today's Cole Porter,
like, our George Gershwin, our Jerome Kern,
like, these are the new standards,
and everybody knows this music.
So when they hear Super Mario Brothers ground theme,
but then you have like, saxophones and bass and drums,
and live music, like, improvising over chord changes,
making new melodies over these songs
that have melodies that are seen as immortal,
and you're making new immortal melodies on your own.
It's really crazy,
and so people really wanted to see that.
And that's when we knew that we had something.
Not just our personal expression that you wanted to do,
but also something that was
kind of essential for everybody else to also see.
We are celebrating, of course, the ultimate fighters,
like, some of the greatest fighting games in history,
and their respective soundtracks
that also have a fighting chance of being
some of the greatest music of all time.
The first song that we played was a song by Yu Miyake,
who was one of the composers for Tekken 4.
And that song was called Bit Crusher.
Fight!
(jazz band playing Bit Crusher)
The next one is a little lesser known.
It's called Darkstalkers.
And that song was called Green Screen,
which is the stage for two characters,
Rikuo, otherwise known as Aulbath, and Sasquatch.
(video game music)
(jazz band playing Green Screen)
The third song is actually from
one of my favorite games of all time,
and it has one of my favorite soundtracks,
from Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
I love it because this song called Clocktower Stage
is a very identifiable song for me.
It has a nice, simple melody that's reminiscent
of certain other George Gershwin type melodies,
or any jazz melodies.
(sings theme)
It has this nice melody you can identify,
you can attach yourself to.
(jazz band playing Clocktower Stage)
The next song is also from the lexicon of like,
the old Street Fighter and Darkstalkers kind of franchises,
but this is from Street Fighter III: Third Strike,
and it's one of the greatest games,
and one of the greatest soundtracks that we know of
of all time.
Tetsuya Shibata also did this one,
and this is called Jazzy NYC '99.
(jazz band playing Jazzy NYC '99)
I personally think this is probably the best way
to get the most amount of young people
into jazz as possible.
A lot of people can find parallels between
the world of video game music and jazz,
by that kind of personal expression,
that kind of individual expression,
the same kind of expression that you would have
by creating a character in World of Warcraft,
or creating a character in Soulcalibur or Final Fantasy.
You can have that same feeling about
creating your own character in the music.
That's really cool for me in any kind of way,
whether it's a simple fighting game,
or if it's a role playing game.
You know, these games mean a lot to us,
and they've done a lot for us in our lives.
My takeaway from those games
was being able to create a story,
create a world, create an ethos
around what I'm doing,
and expressing myself in that way.
I wanted to find out what was this thing
that meant so much to me,
and how it can affect other people?
What is this positive source of energy?
And video games really gave me
a really positive source of energy.
And I always wanted to have that feeling.
(applause and cheering)
All right, all right!