Austin Wintory and Troy Baker Live at Game Music Festival 2026

Look, if you’ve ever wondered what goes on inside a video game composer’s head while they’re scoring that moment where you’re flying through the clouds in Journey or sneaking through Victorian London in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, you’re about to get the closest thing to a live answer.

Austin Wintory, the Grammy Award winning composer behind some of gaming’s most iconic soundtracks, is teaming up with Troy Baker (yes, that Troy Baker, the voice of Joel in The Last of Us and Sam in Death Stranding) for a one night show called The Art of Game Music. It’s part of Game Music Festival 2026, and it’s happening on Friday 19 June at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, South London.

But here’s the thing that makes this different from your standard “orchestra plays video game music” gig. This isn’t just a greatest hits setlist. Sure, you’ll hear pieces from Journey, ABZÛ, The Pathless, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, and the Grammy winning Sword of the Sea. The London Mozart Players are handling those, and they’ve been around for over 75 years, so you know the performances are going to sound incredible.

The really interesting bit, though, is the live composition element. During the show, Wintory is going to score gameplay in real time on stage. As in, there’s a visual prompt playing, and he’s composing and adapting the music as it happens, right in front of you. That’s the kind of creative process you never normally get to see. Usually it’s just the finished product layered under gameplay and you never think twice about the thousands of micro decisions that went into making that music feel right.

If you know anything about Wintory and Baker together, you’ll know these two have serious chemistry. They’ve been doing podcast conversations about games and music for a while now, and this show is basically them taking that energy and putting it on a stage with a full orchestra behind them. Baker put it well when he said that their conversations always come back to celebrating what makes game music so powerful, and this is the live version of that.

The whole performance runs about 90 minutes with no interval, so it’s a focused, uninterrupted experience. VIP ticket holders also get a meet and greet session afterwards.

Tickets are available now at gamemusic.net, including a limited pool of VIP options that come with premium seating and access to an educational event with special guests (details on that are still to come). You can also book directly through the Fairfield Halls website.

For a proper look at how the live composition element is going to work, Wintory has posted a video breakdown on his YouTube channel that’s worth checking out.