The Score | Keep on Trucking

Mobile music trucks were everywhere this fall. In September, the Kansas City Symphony rolled out its Mobile Music Box, with the goal of playing music in all the city’s zip codes. In the first month of the free outdoor concerts, orchestra musicians gave more than 50 performances in the custom-designed trailer—in parking lots, farmers’ markets, parks, suburbs, and on both sides of the Kansas/Missouri state line. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra gave pop-up performances around the city from a Concert Truck at venues including hospitals, parks, and the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. The 45-to-60-minute concerts in November and December featured DSO musicians and pianists Susan Zhang and Nick Luby, who created The Concert Truck in 2016. In Shenzhen, China, the Lang Lang Music Bus, a red double-decker bus and music stage, debuted this fall; the vehicle is equipped with the same seats as those in Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, a digital piano, a Bose amplification system, and an audio mixer.