Minna Choi, founder and artistic director of Magik*Magik Orchestra, at a 2025 concert in San Francisco. The orchestra will stage a "sleepover concert" called COCOON at Gray Area in San Francisco on Sept. 26. (Courtesy Dan Steiner)
It was an especially inconvenient time to get sick, recalls the composer, founder, and artistic director of Magik*Magik Orchestra, because she needed to do some big-picture planning for the year ahead. Her group, a collection of top-tier Bay Area instrumentalists that can range from a soloist to an 80-piece symphony, had a big 2025. Magik*Magik live-scored a poetry performance with incarcerated people inside the Central California Women’s Facility, accompanied Queens of the Stone Age at Davies Symphony Hall, staged kid-friendly shows with Thao Nguyen and the Dodos’ Meric Long (juice boxes included), and appeared on the soundtrack for Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, among other collaborations.
But when it was time to dream up shows for 2026, Choi could barely stay awake.
“Even after I kind of got better, I was just unable to get out of bed,” recalls the composer. “I remember at one point, even just standing in my kitchen munching on leftovers felt like too much effort, so I brought a chair next to my refrigerator. I was sitting there eating lunch, being like, I’m so tired … and also, it’s January, and I don’t have any ideas. What are we gonna do?”
Thao Nguyen performs with Magik*Magik Orchestra in the Green Room at the War Memorial Veterans Building in August 2025. (Dan Steiner)
Eight months later, Magik*Magik is staging perhaps its most ambitious performance yet. And, in the spirit of its origins, audience members will be able to enjoy it from bed. COCOON, featuring over eight hours of live music, will kick off at San Francisco’s Gray Area theater starting at 9:30pm on Sept. 26. Beginning at midnight, soloists will perform in shifts — sticking to a volume that allows attendees to sleep — over new ambient music created by composer Christina Vantzou. The concert will run through sunrise on Sept. 27, as attendees listen (and doze) to the music from cots set up throughout the space.
The “orchestra sleepover concert,” also billed as the nonprofit’s 18th birthday party, will conclude with a group performance of a new 26-minute composition by Choi, timed to gently rouse concert-goers and end at exactly 7:01am, when the sun rises over the city. Like that sunrise, the composer says, this piece will be performed once and never repeated. The work is a nod to the idea that every morning is a gift you can’t take for granted, something Choi felt deeply this year while watching friends deal with health struggles.
Minna Choi conducts a Magik*Magik show. (Dan Steiner)
Choi also drew major inspiration from German-British composer Max Richter’s Sleep, an 8.5-hour concept album released in 2015 and performed in select cities around the world (though never in San Francisco), including some performances where audience members watched from beds set up in concert halls. Sitting in her own bed earlier this year, Choi watched a 10th anniversary performance on YouTube and found herself thinking that Magik*Magik’s official theme of 2026 should be rest.
“Last year was a huge year for us, and it makes sense to take a year and catch our breath again,” says Choi. “And I thought, maybe other people feel like that too, and we can just spend one night resting together.”
Minna Choi and Magik*Magik Orchestra members accompanied poets from the Central California Women's Facility for a performance.
Enthusiasm from the folks at Gray Area, long a home for experimental performance, was encouraging. They were also the only venue in town who said yes. It turns out setting up beds in a music venue is a little more complicated than it sounds: Theaters with fixed seating were out. “All the other [music] venues were like, ‘We can’t have people sleeping overnight,’” says Choi. She even called some churches, but they didn’t want music played after 2am.
“Then I called Gray Area, and they were instantly like, ‘We’ve always wanted to do something like this. Yes.’”
The beds do limit the capacity of the concert: Gray Area can seat upwards of 400 people for concerts, or 800 people for a standing-room-only show. Fewer than 100 people will be able to attend this performance in person, which meant Magik*Magik had to set a higher ticket price to pay the musicians fairly. But they aim to make the event worth it. For $250, attendees get 8.5 hours of live orchestral music, a camping cot, tea or hot chocolate, midnight snacks, and coffee, fruit, and pastries in the morning. (Those interested in a VIP experience can drop $2500 on one of a limited number of high-quality queen beds, plus a poster signed by all the musicians.)
A working stage plot for COCOON, a sleepover concert at Gray Area planned for Sept. 26, 2026. (Courtesy Magik*Magik Orchestra)
Choi acknowledges it’s not the most accessible performance Magik*Magik has ever staged, and she’s wrestled with whether the theme might come off as indulgent or tone-deaf.
“Like, ‘Oh, the world is crumbling around us, and we’re going to do a concert for less than 100 people that celebrates rest? Are we even allowed to do this?’” she asks, describing the show as an experiment.
But so far, the idea has seemed to resonate even more broadly than she expected.
“I think many of us feel guilty about needing rest, or struggle with how to balance it all,” says Choi. “But I think even in a world that is on fire, at some point, you do just have to go to bed, and that has to be OK.”
Emma Silvers is a San Francisco journalist with 15+ years of experience covering the people and policies shaping arts and culture in the Bay. She grew up in Albany and lives in the Mission.
