The Oklahoma City Philharmonic is asking its audience to do something unusual this weekend: pull out their phones mid-concert and help make the music. The orchestra's Worlds of Wonder program hits the Civic Center Music Hall on Saturday, October 10, at 7:30 p.m., pairing Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven and Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain with Fauré's Requiem and a space-themed piece that turns every smartphone in the house into an ambient instrument.
Music Director Alexander Mickelthwate and Executive Director Brent Hart previewed the concert on a recent broadcast segment, describing it as an immersive journey through shadow and light, according to KOKH. The performance will also feature guest soprano Emily Reeves Bohl, baritone Mark Billy, guitarist Jay Gleason and the Windsong Chamber Choir alongside the full orchestra, as detailed by the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. A pre-concert discussion led by Mickelthwate begins at 6:30 p.m., ahead of the main performance.
The App That Turns the Crowd Into a Choir
The evening's centerpiece is Eric Whitacre's Deep Field, a work built around a custom mobile app that audience members trigger together at measure 217, releasing electronic ambient sounds that blend with the live orchestra and choir, according to the composer's own catalog listing at ericwhitacre.com. The piece is paired with a companion film, Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of Our Universe, created in partnership with scientists from the Space Telescope Science Institute and the visual studio 59 Productions, per the same source. That film reportedly weaves in high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope fly-through animations, giving the hall's screens a cosmic backdrop while the crowd's phones hum along.
Coordinating that kind of audience participation inside a working concert hall is no small feat, and it fits a pattern the orchestra has leaned into this season. The research notes accompanying this program describe the broader push by Mickelthwate to blend traditional masterworks, rock arrangements and multimedia experiences aimed at pulling in younger and non-traditional symphony audiences — and Worlds of Wonder, with its Zeppelin covers next to Fauré, is as clear an example as any.
Second Stop in a Milestone Season
Worlds of Wonder is the second concert in the OKC Phil's 2026–2027 Classics series, following the national birthday season opener America the Beautiful: A 250 Celebration on September 19, according to Oklahoma City Free Press. Tickets remain available for Saturday's show, per KOKH's report.
Mickelthwate has led the Oklahoma City Philharmonic since 2018, making him only the second music director in the organization's history, according to the orchestra's own account of its past. He previously served as music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Hart, meanwhile, took over as executive director in March 2023 after two terms as president of the organization's board, a transition the Oklahoma City Philharmonic announced at the time.
A Hall Built for This Kind of Show
The concert takes place in the Civic Center Music Hall's primary venue, the 2,477-seat Thelma Gaylord Performing Arts Theatre, which emerged from a $52.2 million MAPS renovation completed in September 2001 and includes adjustable acoustic walls designed to serve both symphonic concerts and touring theater. The orchestra traces its roots to a local orchestral lineage dating back to 1924, though the current organization was established in 1988 under founding music director Joel Levine.
The Oklahoma City Philharmonic reaches more than 185,000 attendees annually across its Classics, Pops and free outdoor park concerts, while its educational programs serve over 100,000 students, according to OKC City Lifestyle. The Worlds of Wonder concert follows a string of recent programming from the orchestra, including a children's symphony built around E.T. and Toy Story and a Stillwater gala backing Tony winner Cynthia Erivo with an outdoor simulcast, both covered in earlier Hoodline reporting.
