ROCO Lets Houston Audience Steer a Live Concerto at Zilkha Hall

Houston's ROCO chamber orchestra will hand its audience an unusual amount of creative control next year, letting concertgoers help steer the direction of a live guitar concerto in real time. The performance, part of a program called “Pure Imagination,” is set for Saturday, February 13, 2027, at 5 p.m. inside Zilkha Hall at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Houston.

The concert's centerpiece is the Texas premiere of a new guitar concerto titled “I Feel...” by composer Austin Wintory, co-commissioned by ROCO and written for soloist Mak Grgić, according to CultureMap Houston. The piece incorporates interactive technology that allows audience members to shape the live performance as it unfolds, per The Hobby Center. Exactly how that real-time audience input will function inside a 500-seat acoustic space remains an open question ahead of the performance, per the same venue listing.

Wintory is no stranger to pushing boundaries in how audiences engage with music. In 2012, his soundtrack for the PlayStation 3 game *Journey* became the first video game score ever nominated for a Grammy Award, according to the Fames Institute. He has since scored titles including *Abzû* and *Assassin's Creed Syndicate*. His soloist for the Texas premiere, Grgić, is himself a four-time Grammy nominee, having picked up his most recent nod in November 2025 in the Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance category for the album *Slavic Sessions*, per Schmidt Artists International. Grgić also serves as an assistant professor of guitar at the University of South Carolina.

A Yellowstone Story Set to Music

Alongside the Wintory premiere, the program includes the world premiere of Maxime Goulet's suite “The Return of Wolves: A Musical Tale of Nature's Balance,” which the Hobby Center listing notes was commissioned by ROCO to musically trace the ecological rebirth of Yellowstone National Park following the reintroduction of wolves there. The nature theme carries through the rest of the program, which the venue's calendar lists as also featuring the first movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 and the first movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds, per seed facts drawn from the CultureMap Houston listing.

Conducting the evening will be Mei-Ann Chen, who has served as ROCO's first-ever Artistic Partner since 2019, according to the Manhattan School of Music, where she was named Director of Orchestral Activities in April 2026. Chen also holds posts as Music Director of the Chicago Sinfonietta and Chief Conductor of Austria's Recreation Orchestra Graz, per the same source.

An Intimate Hall Built for Sound

Zilkha Hall itself is part of the draw. The 500-seat, two-level proscenium theater was designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects with acoustics engineered by Jaffe Holden Acoustics, according to the Hobby Center. It sits alongside the much larger 2,650-seat Sarofim Hall inside the Hobby Center complex, which opened in downtown Houston in 2002 at 800 Bagby St., per CultureMap Houston's event listing.

“Pure Imagination” is one stop on ROCO's 22nd season, dubbed “ROCO Odyssey,” which features seven commissioned world premieres performed across a rotating set of landmark Houston civic spaces, according to ROCO. Other venues on this season's calendar include the newly opened Ismaili Center Houston, where Hoodline previously reported on ROCO's free debut concerts, and Brockman Hall for Opera.

Founder's Accessibility Push Continues

ROCO was founded in 2005 by oboist Alecia Lawyer, who was named the inaugural Texas State Musician in Classical music in May 2025, per SMU. The 40-piece professional chamber orchestra has commissioned and premiered more than 130 original works over its history and ranks among the top U.S. orchestras for performing works by women and composers of color, according to the same SMU account.

True to that accessibility-focused identity, ROCO operates a Pay-What-You-Wish ticketing structure across its main concert series, a model the organization introduced in 2022 to remove financial barriers to live classical music, per ROCO. The orchestra also offered buy-one-get-one-free tickets using the code HTW26 during Houston Theater Week in August 2026. Tickets for the February concert are available through the event's ticketing page, and organizers note the event is subject to change due to weather or other concerns, so attendees should check with the venue to confirm the show is proceeding as scheduled.