Into the Sound of Music
How Immersive Concerts Are Evolving Fast
Hi friends,
It's been a busy few weeks, but I’m back and excited to share the second installment in our immersive experience series. After exploring immersive theater last time, we now turn to immersive concerts, where technology, storytelling, and performance intersect in increasingly fascinating ways.
Special thanks to Leigh Sachwitz, founder and creative director of Flora&FaunaVisions member of The Storytelling Company, who contributed her perspectives to this edition. Leigh’s design and experience thinking are shaping some of the most emotionally resonant live shows out there.
Let’s get into it.
The Immersive Wave: Music, Ritual, and New Mediums
Music has always been immersive. It’s ritualistic by nature, bringing people together, triggering memory, and deepening emotional experiences. In that way, music is already a form of immersion. But what’s changing now is the toolkit: digital art, spatial audio, real-time motion design, VR and AR.
We’re entering an era where "concert" means more than a stage and a setlist. Consider some of these boundary-pushing formats:
Apple Immersive x Metallica: A Vision Pro concert experience featuring spatial audio and up-close views from the band’s M72 finale in Mexico City. It's Metallica via mind meld.
Flying Apsaras: A multimedia musical bringing the Mogao Caves to life, fusing Buddhist iconography with motion design and modern soundscapes.
Voltage: Premiering at Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig, this immersive ballet layers real-time tracking, reactive projections, and electronic-orchestral fusion.
Sounds of the Ocean: Winner of multiple awards, this wellness-driven show mixes underwater sound recordings with live music and meditation. A sonic sanctuary.
CAGES: A limited-run theater piece that included multi-layer projection, holographic visuals, and a bespoke spatial sound system. Even the bar was part of the show.
Rolling Stone Presents: AMPLIFIED: A 50-minute walk-through retrospective of rock ’n’ roll history narrated by Kevin Bacon, delivered on a 270° 18K canvas.
All of these showcase the creative possibilities emerging in this space. This is where things start to get interesting, because they hint at the variety of directions immersive concerts can go. From tech-enabled intimacy to grand narrative spectacle, the field is wide open. What follows are a couple examples of what I find particularly interesting.
Cercle Odyssey Immersion at Scale (With No Phones Allowed)
Few producers blend aesthetic ambition and location-specific performance like Cercle. Known for placing DJs in jaw-dropping sites (castles, hot air balloons, salt flats), they recently launched Cercle Odyssey: a touring 360-degree concert experience.
The LA edition took place inside a custom-built cube at the Convention Center. Artists like Paul Kalkbrenner, Empire of the Sun, and Black Coffee performed against visuals filmed with drones (no AI) in Bolivia, Namibia, and French Polynesia. The narrative drew inspiration from Homer’s Odyssey.
Notable elements:
Nonlinear storytelling
Curated scent diffusion for emotional priming
Phone-free policy: Devices are locked in magnetic pouches. Attendees receive curated videos afterward.
The last point is critical. When audiences attend to capture, not participate, they disconnect from the moment. By removing phones, Cercle enhances focus and presence, at the cost of social media buzz, but with a huge payoff in emotional retention.
Evolving Symphonies: Projection, Narrative, and Scale
Classical music is also being transformed through immersive frameworks. Here are a few notable experiments:
Picasso Symphony: Projection mapping meets period composition. Audiences hear Stravinsky and Satie while Picasso’s works develop in front of them.
Planet Earth III Live in Concert 4K wildlife visuals from the BBC paired with a live orchestra performing Hans Zimmer’s sweeping score. Conservation meets awe.
Become Ocean: A meditative experience where Pulitzer-winning music is matched with wave projections and oceanic lighting.
Why does this matter? Because it's scalable. Like FEVER’s Candlelight Series, these experiences can be modular. Touring them becomes possible by leveraging existing AV infrastructure or plug-and-play systems. The blend of orchestra and digital design is fertile ground.
The Dome Boom: From Planetariums to Billion-Dollar Spheres
Concert architecture is becoming a format in itself. Spherical and dome-based venues offer natural canvases for wraparound visual storytelling.
Mesmerica by James Hood and Vortex Domes is a planetarium show blending surround visuals and 7.1 audio. A rare live version tours select venues as well.
The Sphere (Las Vegas): Arguably the most advanced immersive concert venue ever built. With a 16K interior wraparound screen and spatial audio for every seat, it launched with U2 and has hosted Eagles, Backstreet Boys, and more.
What’s next? Mini-Spheres. The company behind the Vegas venue is developing smaller, 5,000-capacity versions, maintaining the core tech but reducing cost and footprint. This could make high-end immersive concert infrastructure accessible to mid-tier artists and markets.
Meanwhile, COSM, an LA-based immersive dome firm, may become a key rival in this space. A Sphere vs. COSM platform race may soon emerge.
The Shifting Landscape of Vegas Residencies
Residencies once meant creative stagnation. No longer. The 2010s saw artists like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Usher redefine the model, turning Vegas into a prestige venue.
Why it worked:
Lower physical demands for performers
Consistent revenue and traffic for venues
Hybrid concert-theater aesthetics
But saturation followed. Case in point: In 2025, Black Eyed Peas canceled their planned residency due to lack of demand. The gold rush is stabilizing.
Now the question is: What’s next? Can a middle market emerge? One where Sphere-level spectacle isn't required, but traditional residencies feel outdated? There’s a huge opportunity here to combine branded storytelling, scalable formats, and mid-tier acts into a sustainable new model.
What Leigh Sachwitz Is Watching (And Building)
Leigh Sachwitz has worked on some of the most emotionally resonant immersive events in the world. Here are her key themes to watch:
“Designing for emotional sustainability is core to what we do. It's not just about impressing people. It's about giving them something they carry with them emotionally. When an experience stays with you, it becomes a memory, not just a spectacle.”
“Experience is a form of brand currency. A concert today isn’t just about entertainment, it’s about creating loyalty and emotional connection, not just for the artist, but for any brand involved.”
“Micro-personalization is rising. The best shows allow the audience to feel seen. Whether it's adaptive visuals or reactive interactions, people want to feel the show notices them.”
“Audiences as co-creators is another major shift. The boundary between audience and performer is blurring. Immersive design means building with the guest in mind as participant, not just spectator.”
“And finally, bridging physical and digital is essential. Shows can and should have a digital afterlife. AR layers, streaming extensions, collectibles, and companion content can extend the impact of the live moment into long-tail engagement.”
Leigh’s team is actively building new projects that reflect this philosophy, where emotion, story, and tech all serve the audience’s internal journey, not just the external wow.
Closing Thoughts: Concerts as Platforms
Immersive concerts are evolving into platforms for creativity, commerce, and community.
From VR rock shows to orchestral oceans, from mini-Spheres to projection-mapped symphonies, the concert as we know it is becoming something more flexible, participatory, and emotionally meaningful. New technologies and formats are not replacing traditional shows, they’re expanding what’s possible.
We’re seeing the early stages of a shift where concerts become more than performances, they become environments, rituals, and containers for story. The opportunity now is to design them to resonate long after the music stops.
Next up: immersive food & beverage. Yes, you can taste story too.
Thanks for reading,
Daniel