Have you ever wanted to perform as part of an orchestra, but either never had the musical knowledge or opportunity to do so? At this year’s Edinburgh Fringe that completely changes, thanks to a new participatory and immersive music-themed experience Concerts of the Future. Throughout the festival, audiences will have the opportunity to join the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, made possible through the combination of Virtual Reality, spatial audio and 3D imaging. I recently had the opportunity to ask composer, researcher and co-creator Ciaran Frame some questions about the format, technology behind Concerts of the Future and find out some finer details on this novel experience opening at Summerhall at this year’s Fringe.
What inspired you to create an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) music experience where participants can perform alongside the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra?
It started with a simple question: what if anyone could walk into a concert hall and play? We think that concert halls are full of invisible barriers like cost and the assumption that music is only for a certain few, and we wanted to flip that script completely. We’re a team from SensiLab at Monash University (in Melbourne, Australia), building instruments that you can play just by moving, so putting someone on stage inside a real orchestra felt like a wonderful way to explore this concept.
How did you experiment with VR, spatial audio and 3D imaging in Concerts of the Future?
Most of the experimentation involved trying things out and seeing if they worked! We’re working with pretty cutting-edge tech, so a lot of the time there’s no rulebook for how to go about it. One of the biggest experiments was recording the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in full 360-degree 3D using point-cloud scanning and motion capture, and we ended up with over 25 terabytes of data.
With various time slots throughout the day at Summerhall and only five participants every 20 minutes, to what extent is this an intimate experience for audiences?
It’s utterly intimate and participatory for everyone who walks through the stage door. Everyone gets their very own ‘AirStick’ instrument to play, so even within the small group, each person’s experience will be different, because how they move shapes their sound and the performance.
What was it about Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 that made this the ideal piece of music for the immersive concert?
The fourth movement of Beethoven’s Seventh is such a wild romp – it’s a dance-like fever dream and we’re still not sick of listening to it. It’s also the perfect kind of music that carries you along whether or not you’ve ever played an instrument before – you can just throw yourself in with an AirStick and it still feels fun. It’s very hard not to grin while you play it.
You are passionate to showcase how anyone in Edinburgh can be a musician. Who is Concerts of the Future aimed at?
It’s such a trope to say ‘everyone’, but we mean it! It doesn’t matter whether you listen to classical music or have never set foot in a concert hall or played a note in your life. If you’re slightly curious about playing with an ensemble, or interested in cutting-edge tech, then come along and try it out yourself.
Every participant receives a video at the end, showing them centre stage and capturing the orchestral experience. Aside from a souvenir video, what do you hope audiences take away from this new and exciting experience?
Aside from the little keepsake video, I guess we’re really interested in people leaving with a newfound appreciation for music and how they relate to it. This experience only works when you ‘do’ it and everyone’s way of participating will be different. We hope it gives each person a wonderful new way of reimagining what music can be for them.
Catch Concerts of the Future at the 2026 festival
Concerts of the Future certainly sounds like it fuses together orchestral practice and technology in such an innovative way. It is amazing that the creative team are trying to reduce invisible barriers to concert halls and classical music, and have created something totally unique that everybody can try. The immersive experience is based at Summerhall Lobby at Summerhall (venue 26) from 6th – 31st August. 30-minute time slots can be booked between 13:00 and 18:00 daily, with the show on sale via the EdFringe website now.
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