Imagine stepping into a space where music surrounds you. Where light shimmers and shifts like the surface of the water. Where sound flows in waves, washing over you from every direction. This is Become Ocean, a groundbreaking immersive concert experience presented by the Charlotte Symphony in partnership with Blumenthal Arts, coming to Blume Studios on February 28 and March 1.

John Luther Adams's Pulitzer Prize-winning composition Become Ocean is a musical exploration of the ocean's vast, mysterious power, and the ecological challenges of rising sea levels. Bringing this powerful concept to life in a way that fully immerses the audience requires a careful blend of artistic vision and technical expertise. Two Creative Directors from Visuell Immersive joined us to discuss how they're working with the Charlotte Symphony's creative team to shape this one-of-a-kind experience.

Creating an Oceanic World 

Unlike a traditional concert hall, Blume Studios provides a flexible space where sound and visuals can fully surround the audience.

"We approached this with simplicity in mind -- not to overwhelm, but to create something elemental," explains Ian Robinson, one of the artistic minds behind Become Ocean. "Water, light, movement, and sound -- all blending into a singular, meditative experience that allows space for each audience member to bring their own 'in ocean' emotions to the surface."

From the moment audiences arrive, they will feel immersed in this world. "In the lobby, the waves greet you -- lapping at the edges, soft but vast, setting the stage for what's to come. But inside the performance space, you're pulled under, into the deep, where everything moves with weight and grace."


At Blume Studios, Ian Robinson (far right) and Aaron McCoy (seated, right) discuss Become Ocean with creative teams from the Charlotte Symphony and Blumenthal Arts.

Merging Music and Motion

To bring this vision to life, the production team is designing projections and lighting that move with the same fluidity as the music. These elements won't serve as just a backdrop, but as an extension of the music itself.

"The project aims to create a transformative environment that embodies the verb 'become' in Become Ocean by transporting the audience into a contemplative, beautiful, and emotionally connected oceanic space," says Aaron McCoy, Creative Director from Visuell Immersive.

At times, the space will be bathed in deep blues and shifting silvers, mimicking light refracting through water. Elsewhere, projections will ripple across the walls, expanding and contracting with the ebb and flow of the orchestra.

"The way light moves in water is unpredictable -- sometimes a shimmer, sometimes a rush," Robinson says. "Our projections mimic that fluidity, creating an environment that doesn't dictate but suggests, allowing the audience's imagination to take over."

"This isn't just a concert; it's a journey."

 

Floating Between Sound and Light

Rather than simply illustrating an oceanic landscape, the production invites audiences to experience the sensation of drifting within it.

"This isn't just a concert; it's a journey," Robinson explains. "We wanted the audience to feel like they are adrift, floating between sound and light, between the surface and the depths, with no clear beginning or end -- just the pulse of the ocean carrying them."

McCoy adds, "By the end, the light dissolves into an infinite fade, a slow retreat into silence. The ocean remains -- vast, unknowable, and ever-moving."

Experience Become Ocean

Join us for this immersive performance of Become Ocean at Blume Studios on February 28 and March 1.

If you know the mambo, rumba, or cha-cha, you have the Afro-Cuban jazz musician, bandleader, and composer Mario Bauzá to thank. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1911, Bauzá was among the first musicians to spread Afro-Cuban music in the United States through the New York City jazz scene during the Harlem Renaissance. By collaborating with orchestra musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo, and Machito to create Afro-Cuban jazz combinations, "The Original Mambo King" cemented West African influences in jazz music, popularizing the new fusion and transforming the future of an American genre.  

A clarinet prodigy raised by Spanish godparents in Cuba, Bauzá was trained in classical music from a young age and was only 9 years old when he held a chair as bass clarinetist in the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra in 1922. He later joined dance bands, and as a teenager, he traveled with Antonio María Romeu's charanga ensemble to New York City in 1927, where Harlem's community made a life-changing impact on the impressionable musician. "I fell in love with jazz then," Bauzá later recalled to DownBeat magazine. 


Determined to return to New York, he picked up saxophone to play full time in jazz clubs but found dwindling employment. When the opportunity opened for a trumpet player to record with the Orquesta Don Azpiazú in 1930, the story goes that an inspired Bauzá told singer Antonio Machín, "If you buy me a trumpet I'll play for you." With just three weeks of practice, Bauzá went into the studio and recorded "La Mulata Rumbera." He was hired as the lead trumpeter for Chick Webb's Orchestra in 1933, which brought him closer to the thriving music community where he would find inspiration and create fusion.  

After joining the Cab Calloway Orchestra in 1938, Bauzá convinced Calloway to hire a talented fellow trumpeter he met during his time in Chick Webb's Orchestra -- Dizzy Gillespie. As the connection developed between Bauzá and Gillespie, a new musical fusion followed, intertwining Gillespie's bebop with Afro-Cuban polyrhythms and Pan-American styles. Gillespie later reflected, "with Mario Bauzá in the [Cab Calloway] band, I really became interested in bringing Latin and especially Afro-Cuban influences into my music...No one was playing that type of music where the bass player, instead of saying, 'boom, boom, boom, boom,' broke up the rhythm, 'boom-be, boom-be, boom-be, boom-be.' No one was doing that. I became very fascinated with the possibilities for expanding and enriching jazz rhythmically and phonically through the use of Afro-Cuban rhythmic and melodic devices." 


Machito, Mario Bauzá, and René Hernández, pioneers of mambo in New York, The Wolfsonian-FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Seeking more musical avenues as co-founder of the diverse orchestra Machito and the Afro-Cubans in 1939, Bauzá sprinkled the rhythms of Havana with jazz arrangement techniques and influences from band members of Italian, Filipino, Latin, Black, and Jewish heritage alongside the vocalist and maraca player Frank "Machito" Grillo. The conga drum, bongos, timbales, and the West African rhythm structures they voiced became inseparable from Latin jazz.  

Blending Afro-Cuban rhythms and jazz harmony in his own composition was inevitable. Bauzá's "Tangá," recorded in 1943, is noted by its organizing clave rhythm, brass jazz harmonies, and improvised solos as the first true Afro-Cuban jazz or Latin jazz song -- from which emerged the genre and its many musicians, including Arturo Sandoval, Chucho Valdés, Celia Cruz, and Tito Puentes. Becoming known as "The Original Mambo King," Bauzá believed the new Afro-Cuban fusion he created with Machito and the Afro-Cubans was "a marriage. Each [music] preserving its identity but walking together." 

Explore the world of Afro-Cuban music with the Charlotte Symphony at Havana Nights on February 21st and 22nd, featuring soprano Camille Zamora and the Mambo Kings.