Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy

Arnie Roth is the music director, producer, and conductor of Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy, in collaboration with the video game company Square Enix. Featuring the music of Nobuo Uematsu and other composers from the Final Fantasy series, Distant Worlds has toured to Tokyo’s International Forum, Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, and the Sydney Opera House, among other venues worldwide. He is also the producer of five Distant Worlds albums and several DVDs and Blu-rays.

Prior to his work with the Final Fantasy tours, Roth was the principal violinist and concertmaster for Mannheim Steamroller, the No. 1 best-selling Christmas artist of all time, working closely for decades with composer Chip Davis on dozens of albums and tours including the Grammy Award-winning Fresh Aire 7.

Roth has conducted many of the world’s great orchestras, including the London Symphony, National Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Houston Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic, Kansai Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Czech National Philharmonic, and Sydney Symphony. He has produced recordings for the Pittsburgh Symphony Brass, the Irish Tenors, George Vosburgh, and for labels including American Gramaphone, JVC, Mattel, Warner Bros., Sony, Koch, Razor & Tie, and AWR Records. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2009.

Amanda Achen has performed at iconic venues including Radio City Music Hall, the Dolby Theater, Hollywood Bowl, Apollo Theater, and Tokyo Dome. In addition to performing on Final Fantasy tours, she has performed with Joe Hisaishi’s Studio Ghibli concerts and on publicity events for Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. On the classical stage, she has sung in Mozart’s Requiem, Carmina burana, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem, Bach’s B-minor Mass, and Handel’s Messiah. For film and television, she can be heard on the soundtracks of Frozen 2, Mulan, Birds of Prey, and The Simpsons. She is a Twitch partner and engages with her audience through streaming sessions of Final Fantasy XIV gameplay, interactive chats, and musical performances. She makes her San Francisco Symphony debut with this performance.

Jenny Wong is Chorus Director of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as the associate artistic director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Recent conducting engagements include the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, the Industry, Long Beach Opera, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, Phoenix Chorale, and Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

Under Wong’s baton, the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s performance of Frank Martin’s Mass was named by Alex Ross one of ten “Notable Performances and Recordings of 2022” in the New Yorker. In 2021 she was a national recipient of Opera America’s inaugural Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors. She has conducted Peter Sellars’s staging of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro, Sweet Land by Du Yun and Raven Chacon, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar with Long Beach Opera in collaboration with WildUp. She has prepared choruses for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including for a recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 that won a 2022 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. 

A native of Hong Kong, Wong received her doctor of musical arts and master of music degrees from the University of Southern California and her undergraduate degree in voice performance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She won two consecutive world champion titles at the World Choir Games 2010 and the International Johannes Brahms Choral Competition 2011. She recently extended her contract with the SF Symphony through the 2028–29 season.