Tickets still available: The Chinese Room’s ‘Dear Esther’ live at the Barbican

Just a few days after the console release of Dear Esther: Landmark Edition, another very special date is right around the corner. Next week on October 14th, Dear Esther’s iconic soundtrack, composed by Jessica Curry, will be performed live at the Barbican’s Milton Court Concert Hall in the heart of London. Dan Pinchbeck, Creative Director at The Chinese Room, the game studio behind Dear Esther, will be playing through the entire game live on stage, and the original voice actor will be there to read the in-game monologue to the audience.

When you think about it, Dear Esther is the perfect game for this unusual format. Not only does it have an outstanding soundtrack deserving of a large concert hall, but also an amazing and (fairly) linear story taking up about 60 to 90 minutes of playtime.

You can listen to Jessica Curry’s full soundtrack for Dear Esther below:

Composer Jessica Curry was delighted when the Barbican, home of the London Symphony Orchestra and possibly London’s most prestigious concert venue, got on board with the unconventional concept of Dear Esther Live.

During SoundTrack_Cologne 13, she told us about ringing up Chris Sharp, the Barbican’s music programmer, to pitch her idea to the Bar: “He is one of those guys that will give anything a go once. He’s mainly a classical, contemporary classical programmer, and he said ‘I don’t know anything about video games. I don’t know if anyone’s going to come. Do you know if anyone’s going to come?’ I was like ‘Not really’, and he said: ‘Oh, never mind, let’s do it, let’s give it a go one night!‘”

The Milton Court fits roughly 600 people, and tickets have been selling well so far, but some some are still available online. Whether you’ve played the game already or not, you might want to seize the opportunity and get one of the remaining tickets (£22.50 plus booking fee) for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. You can read a bit more about the whole event on FactMag.com.