Norrlandsoperan Philharmonic Orchestra shares stage with Audio Pro speakers

The 'mobile phone orchestra' project will debut next year

May 12, 2026

Speakers from Swedish speaker designer Audio Pro are being used in a very unique music project in Umeå, Sweden - featuring the Philharmonic Orchestra, Norrlandsoperan, accompanied by schoolchildren playing music using their mobile phones.

The finale of a three-year long project, MAXAT, takes place at Norrlandsoperan in Umeå, Sweden. Known as the 'Mobile Phone Orchestra', this project features teenagers playing music through Audio Pro speakers using their mobile phones as instruments. They take the stage together with the Philharmonic Orchestra Norrlandsoperan for an evening of musical compositions by Lind, Pärt and Ravel.

“We were contacted by Norrlandsoperan who were looking for speakers that could function as a musical instrument in an orchestra - a request you don’t hear very often. Initially we had a hard time even imagining how this would work, but now that we have seen the result, it suddenly makes a lot of sense,” says Nils Ankarcrona, CEO of Audio Pro.

The music is specially composed to be played using mobile phones instead of traditional instruments by young people with no previous musical experience, as they are instructed via color coding on how to play their own part of the musical score.

Each mobile phone is connected to an Audio Pro speaker that amplifies each player's individual music. The music produced by the speakers is combined with the Philharmonic Orchestra's composition and becomes a joint musical score that is performed in the concert hall.

Andreas Nilsson, music producer at Norrlandsoperan, says that they tried several different speakers for this specific project, and finally decided to choose Audio Pro's T3+ speaker, as it was perceived as having by far the best sound of them all.

“The reliability, battery life and sound quality of the speakers have exceeded our expectations in this project. We have now used the speakers for a whole year and toured all over the country with them, including abroad in a concert with the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra in Lithuania. All this transportation and handling of the speakers put quite a strain on them, and we are surprised at how much the Audio Pro speakers can withstand.”

The MAXAT project has been managed by Norrlandsoperan in close collaboration with Anders Lind and his "mobile phone orchestra" concept, with support from the Swedish Arts Council and in collaboration with Umeå University.

Norrlandsoperan’s concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied by school pupils will take place in 2027 and a date will be announced shortly.

To learn more about Audio Pro speakers, click here.

To learn more about Norrlandsoperan, click here.