Musicians

In addition to our video game cover band concerts, MAGFest also features professional video game music composers as guests. These are the people who make the music that MAGFest is founded on, so it's always amazing to meet them and hear their stories. If you're lucky, you may even catch some of them in the Jamspace playing some of their classic songs. We announce new musicians throughout the year, so keep checking back for updates! Here's who we've announced so far this year:
   

Hiroki Kikuta

Hiroki Kikuta is most well known for creating the soundtrack to Secret Of Mana aka Seiken Densetsu 2 for the Super Nintendo. Full bio coming soon.

   

Alexander Brandon

Alexander (known to his friends and family as "Alex" except for his parents and friend Jason, who refer to him by his original name, "Alec") had the "Metroid" theme played over the phone to him by his old friend Jason Emery in 1987. Since then he was hooked on game music, recording it on cassette tape both at home and at arcades. Not once did he score with this kind of behavior, so he gave it up and instead secretly recorded files on WinAMP from ROMs pilfered from Zophar's Domain. Once the Ad Lib soundcard arrived as a Christmas present, the snowball began to roll. Downhill. At a very steep angle. Around a hundred or so songs into the Ad Lib he turned to Amiga MOD creation. The two technologies, humble beginnings as they may have been, launched his career.

Using a version of Ad Lib technology that was able to take its 4 bit capabilities and convert them into pseudo 6/8 bit versions, the soundtrack to his first game, "Tyrian", was a great success. Put it this way, the PC now sounded like a Sega Genesis, and damn if that wasn't cool. Next up was "Unreal" and just about all of us know how that turned out. The Unreal level pack, "Unreal Tournament" and "Deus Ex" followed in a string of interactive MOD based titles that generated music that hadn't been heard before and haven't been heard since. At that point things turned into live orchestras, voice acting with Chow Yun Fat, and working with artists like BT. The music is far more a challenge now than it ever was, but Alex continues to strive forward to create unique sounding tracks, contributing to the incredible Big Giant Circles Deus Ex remix "Siren Synapse" in 2010 and always honoring his roots, interviewing such Japanese rock stars like Hip Tanaka and Tetsuya Mizuguchi. He now owns his own audio production house in Georgetown, Texas, "Funky Rustic", and distributes music through Bandcamp, releasing an album every now and again.

Check out his audio outsourcing company Funky Rustic and his personal website

   

Dan Froelich

"Hi, I’m Dan Froelich. You may remember me from such computer game soundtracks as Jill of the Jungle, Brix and Solar Winds, the Escape! I’ve been in the software business for a couple of decades, and have written soundtracks for a number of successful computer games, songs for semi-successful band projects and a movie score for a very unsuccessful film. I currently live in Colorado with my family (for you east coasters, Colorado is even way past Philadelphia) where I am very active in music, collect guitars, and dream of an 8-bit world."

   

Grant Kirkhope

Formerly of Rareware, and now betrothed to Big Huge Games, Grant has been composing video game music for over 15 years. Some of his most famous soundtracks include Goldeneye 64, Perfect Dark, the Banjo Kazooie series, and Viva Piñata.

Here's a few Musician guest speakers from previous MAGFests:
Blake Althen Mark Cromer Vincent Diamante
Howard Drossin Human Factor Laura “Flute Link” Intravia
Jake "Virt" Kaufman Grant Kirkhope Chris "Kirbopher" Niosi
Overclocked Remix Tommy Tallarico Josh Whelchel