Any world premiere is rare. But this weekend, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra premieres a piece written just for children.

Philharmonia Fantastique is composed by Grammy winner Mason Bates. He worked with an Oscar-worthy team on the film that accompanies the music. Together, the multimedia presentation tells the stories of the instruments in an orchestra.

This weekend, DSO musicians will perform the work while the film runs on a screen above them.  It’s all perfectly synchronized.

Bates won a Grammy for his opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, and is known for mixing orchestral sounds with
electronics. He says that can scare some people, but not fellow musicians.

“The players – they always kind of embrace me, because they like that I respect this is an orchestral situation, it’s about the orchestra,” said Bates. “It’s not about the sound or the technology.”

Bates says he was inspired in part by Disney’s 1940 classic film Fantasia, but this mix of music and animation belongs in the 21st
century.