The magic of Westeros returned to South Florida with “Game of Thrones” composer Ramin Djawadi, a full orchestra and South Carolina choir, special effects and exquisite costume designs.
The Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience hit the BB&T Center in Sunrise for the second time on Sept. 22. Djawadi, along with the orchestra and choir, performed songs from all seven seasons of “Game of Thrones,” highlighting the most memorable scenes from the show on a big screen behind them.
“Enjoy yourself, have fun, and if you see your favorite character, your favorite villain, your favorite scene, I wanna hear it,” Djawadi said at the beginning of the concert.
The audience obliged, cheering and booing at characters as they appeared on the screen. Loud exclamations, such as “Shame! Shame!” on Cersei Lannister or “King of the North!” for Jon Snow, filled the arena and united GoT fans.
“I hope that this is a good holdover until we get the next season,” Djawadi said during the performance.
Djawadi, a German-Iranian composer who won his first Emmy Award this month for GoT, also scores HBO’s science-fiction hit “Westworld” and Amazon’s brand-new “Jack Ryan.” He plans to start working on music for GoT’s eighth season after his tour that overall includes 21 shows in North America and two in Canada.
While performing, Djawadi shared with fans some insights of scoring the series. He said that while working on the show, he writes music to picture, meaning he gets to see new seasons way before many others. However, the process of creating one of the themes for the house of Lannisters, “The Rains of Castamere,” was different from other songs. Djawadi shared how David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the showrunners, called him while shooting the second season of the show and asked him to write a new theme with lyrics from George R. R. Martin’s book.
“‘We’re gonna set this new theme up in season two, and then by the time, in season three, when we come to the now infamous ‘Red Wedding,’ that theme will play there, and then everybody will know ‘wait a minute, that’s the Lannisters, that doesn’t belong here’,’” Djawadi recalled of their conversation.
The audience at BB&T Center not only relived the “Red Wedding” along with other famous scenes from the show, but could also almost feel the cold of Westeros’ winter with simulated confetti-snow when the story moved to the North or the heat of dragon flames every time Daenerys Targaryen said “Dracarys.” Various costumes and decorations, such as picture-moving stages or a “flying” violinist Molly Rogers, with an extremely long dress and rose petals falling on the stage, were quite remarkable, too.
Music, of course, still remained the key factor to the full GoT world experience.
“What I really enjoy about writing music for ‘Game of Thrones’ is that I get to use a lot of unusual and ethnic instruments,” Djawadi said.
Aside from the common orchestra instruments, the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience featured Indian tabla, Armenian duduk, didgeridoo and hammered dulcimer, as each of them is crucial for different themes of the show. For instance, hammered dulcimer, which Djawadi played himself, is a frequently occurring instrument in Arya Stark’s theme “Needle.”
The Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience was more than just a concert; it became a fun get-together event for South Florida fans of the show, many of whom cosplayed their favorite characters or donned their favorite GoT merch.
To get tickets for the upcoming shows in North America, visit the official website of the 2018 tour at https://www.gameofthronesconcert.com/.