February 25th

Today was my first day back at work after being sick and my goodness, it tired me out. The fact that is was a Saturday afternoon didn't really help either. But let's talk about Game of Thrones.

Despite some delays getting started, the concert ended up being fantastic. I was in a pretty interesting seat- directly behind the sound booth, which was also the visuals booth...the tech booth, I guess it was. I was in the third row, and their little section took up the first two rows right in front of me and about seven other people, so we got to see a little bit behind the scenes. It was a little distracting at first, but still neat. The show itself was really spectacular. There were so many practical effects, from pyrotechnics and smoke to things rising from the ground or descending from the ceiling. There were also huge TV screens everywhere, which played clips from the show while the orchestra played relevant music. This was awesome, but since I was so close, it was actually a little hard to look at the screen in front of me because it was so high up- imagine the feeling you get when you sit too close to the screen in a movie theatre and have to tilt your head back the whole time. It was that sort of situation. However, the perk to being so close was obviously that I got to see the musicians really well. The violinist and cellist were my favorites, and they were clearly really into it, which made me get even more into it. The first half of the concert was music from the first five seasons of the show, some of it as medleys and some as songs essentially right off the soundtrack. The second half was pretty much all seasons six, which I haven't seen. Luckily I knew most of the major plot points so while seeing it on the screen was kind of spoiler-y, I still pretty much knew what was going to happen. (It kinda made me want to watch season six, honestly.) I have to say, the finale song was done incredibly well. The tension was so plausible. I also loved that after playing music from the Red Wedding, the composer/conductor Ramin Djawadi joked about locking the doors. He even played the dulcimer for one of the songs, which was so great!

All in all, I'm incredibly happy that I was able to go. I'd go again if I could! It was such a cool experience, and I highly recommend going if you're able!