I'm not real big on making anniversary posts, and I shy away from posting Nintendo content to the #Arcadian Rhythm VGM Radio tag for reasons that I should elaborate on in the introductory post I've been putting off writing. That being said:
20 years ago last week, manga artist and frequent Nintendo/Pokémon collaborator "Ashura" Benimaru Itoh along with the Scitron record label brought together the Tokyo Cuban Boys Jr. and guitarist Yoshihiro Arita to perform live arrangements of themes from the Mario, Yoshi and Zelda franchises. Koji Kondo, Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, Kenta Nagata and Kazumi Totaka also show up, with Itoh leading casual interviews with them between sets. Kondo and Totaka perform on a couple tracks, too. And even Miyamoto gets in on the act, sharing his love for country music and bluegrass in a brief acoustic guitar duet with Itoh.
Two months later, a DVD recording of the (almost) complete performance would be included with volume 101 of Nintendo DREAM magazine. A month after that in December of 2003, a CD recording sans emcee segments would be released by Scitron. The musical performances from the DVD are on youtube in vintage 2008 quality. The CD tracks are also on youtube, but you can find them in MP3/FLAC on the Internet Archive. Scans from the CD and the magazine spread are on vgmdb (registration required). As this page from the magazine explains, there was a performance with Itoh, Miyamoto and Arita that was unfortunately left off both recordings.
I could gush about the whole thing, but I'll try to limit myself to some choice videos and pics after the break.