The evening's mastermind, Georgia Institute of Technology music professor Jason Freeman, broke the news over tea a few weeks before the performance.
Freeman, 30 - a bespectacled musician and self-described computer geek - graduated from very traditional music programs at Yale and Columbia. But he says he wants to change the way people experience music - often, by sitting passively in a dark hall.
"You're in this big room with this incredible music being created onstage but, well, I at least don't feel like I'm much a part of it," he said. "It's like I'm watching something amazing happening rather than feeling part of it."
Freeman envisions an atmosphere more like a rock concert or a baseball game, where the crowd feels connected to the action. He says some of his most memorable musical experiences have involved performing, and he wants to share that with his audience.
He explained what was in store: An overhead camera would track our movements, and a computer system would translate our positions into instructions for a saxophone quartet. The musicians would roam with us, following the instructions on PDAs. The overhead camera, it turns out, has an easier time tracking people if they wear lights on their heads.
On performance night, the gathering of 40-odd audience members was an impressive spectacle. From a balcony it looked like a congregation equipped with glow-in-the-dark yarmulkes. On the floor was the outline of a square, surrounded by a ring of chairs and four projection screens.
When I walked into the square, a dot appeared on the screens, accompanied by an electronic sound. If I stood still, a white light appeared above my dot, as if being beamed up to the starship Enterprise; when I walked, the light became vaguely helix-shaped.
