Immersive Scheherazade

Featuring live musicians combined with 360-degree video to create a transformative atmosphere, Immersive Scheherazade is a fun, new way to enjoy classical music. 

Whether you prefer to sit, stand, or move about, the installation provides ample space to explore and experience. Audiences are encouraged from the moment they enter the space to feel inspired by what they see and hear, including direct quotes from the composer. 

Most impressively, no matter how you choose to experience the performance, you’ll be able to feel yourself inside the orchestra, surrounded by 360-degree views of pre-recorded orchestral videos and live Curtis Symphony Orchestra musicians, following along via program notes and scores placed throughout the exhibit.

Philadelphia, PA

Davis, CA

The performance also includes

• A listening station, which provides a spatial sound experience to hear the work from the harp and the concertmaster’s perspective on stage; and 
• Pop-up spaces surrounding the main space, including a video room in which Curtis faculty provide performance insight, and a room for musicians and audience-members to speak to one another before, during, and after the performance. 

Captured by twenty-six 4k cameras and over 40-plus microphones, and featuring additional “music video”-style sessions with soloists filmed on the iconic Field Concert Hall stage, the first steop of the project saw conductor Osmo Vänskä and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra record a stunning new rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

Developed by the creative minds behind the Performance Innovation Lab and spurred forward by the immense talent of faculty and students, Immersive Scheherazade is as much a testament to the artistry and excellence of Curtis as it is a singular classical music experience.

Perfect for groups, individuals, families, and children, Immersive Scheherazade is an aural and visual ode to Rimsky-Korsakov’s intensely emotive “Scheherazade”, in turn itself a musical homage to an anonymous collection of traditional Arabic, Persian, and Indian fairytales—known today as The Thousand and One Nights, or The Arabian Nights. 

In the ancient myth of “Scheherazade”, a mad Sultan takes a new wife each night only to then have her put to death the following morning. In Scheherazade, he meets his match. Over 1,001 nights, she saves the lives of a thousand women—as well as her own—by relaying to the Sultan an endless series of engrossing stories.  

It is these stories which comprise “Scheherazade” and, in turn, fuel the creative endeavor behind Immersive Scheherazade. And much like the titular character, our hope is that this new “story”, combining the visual and the aural, can continue to be told in spaces across the world.

Recorded at the world-renowned Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in December 2021, including on the iconic Field Concert Hall stage, maestro Vänskä and the Orchestra did more than just recapture the enchanting nature of Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral gem, itself an aural reimagining of an ancient and oft-told myth.