Irish composer and conductor Eímear Noone did not expect to become an icon in video game composition. She just loved music.
“My first job in music was actually playing flute in pit orchestras for musicals at the age of 14,” she says.
At Trinity College Dublin, she was a first-year music student when an older student asked if she and her friends would help record choir parts for a Japanese composer. “’There’d be something like 40 quid in it for you,’” she recalls being told. “To us, that was beer money.”
Months later, her brother called. “He was freaking out, with his buddies right next to him, saying ‘Oh my god, did you work on Metal Gear Solid?’ And I said, ‘No, what are you talking about?’”
Her name was there in the credits. She hadn’t even known she was working on a video game, she laughs.
“It was a coincidence and kind of fate.”
Her first real industry job came just after graduation. She was hired as an assistant orchestrator and brought onto a project that became the celebrated video game World of Warcraft. She remembers sitting in the recording session, watching the game images on a screen overhead, thinking, “Oh wow, this is extraordinary.”
She grew up in classical music. “I decided I was going to be a conductor and a composer when I was seven,” she says.
“I live for the orchestra, you know. I love the orchestra so much.”
That love has translated into a very successful career. In 2020 she made history as the first woman to conduct the orchestra at the Oscars.
Now she comes to Alberta with Gamesymphonic, conducting the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra as they perform a selection of video game music, including her own World of Warcraft composition.
She composes very carefully, she says, to make sure the music can stand alone, that it doesn’t require the game images to flesh it out. “They don’t just work inside the game; they have to work live.”
Her World of Warcraft suite is created to take the listener on a journey of their own.
“What that picture is, and what that story is, is purely up to the listener,” she says. “I want them to go inside of their own imaginations and see where the piece takes them.”
Noone composes and conducts for many projects, including film scores. But she says the games work will also be special to her.
“No matter what I do, I’ll always serve the video game music audience with great pleasure,” she says. Many gamers are coming to hear an orchestra for the first time, she says, and they are generally very enthusiastic and excited.
“It just fills my heart,” she says.
Noone will conduct Gamesymphonic with the Calgary Phil on March 28. More information can be found here.
If you’re intrigued by this powerhouse composer, listen in to From Stage to Screen on Tuesday, March 3, from 8pm to 10pm MT to hear host Aaron Au’s featurette about her.
Eímear Noone, conducting her work, “Malach” from World of Warcraft:
