By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and MIGUEL HELFT

PALO ALTO, California - An expectant hush fell over the audience as the director of the chamber ensemble, Ge Wang, came out and asked them to turn off their cellphones. The seven other musicians, dressed in black, filed in and took their positions in a circle.

The conductor raised his hands. A low droning sound arose, as if the chamber ensemble were tuning. Then the musicians began to swing their arms in wide circles, creating rising and falling waves of electronic sound.

The Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra’s performance on December 3 used the most unusual of instruments: Apple iPhones amplified by speakers attached to small fingerless gloves.

Sometimes the sounds were otherworldly. Sometimes, they mimicked raindrops, bird songs or freeway traffic. In one piece, two performers blew into their phones to stir virtual wind chimes. In another, the instruments took on personalities based on the pitch, volume and frequency of the notes played .

From the earliest days of the iPhone, applications that mimic musical instruments have topped the download charts. But the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra, with its avant-garde compositions and electronic renditions of popular songs like Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” is trying to push the frontiers of the four-decadeold field of computer music.

Ge Wang, the assistant professor of music who leads the twoyear- old Stanford group, says the iPhone may be the first instrument - electronic or acoustic - that millions of people will carry in their pockets. “I can’t bring my guitar or my piano or my cello wherever I go, but I do have my i- Phone at all times,” he said.

Professor Wang said he would like to democratize the process of making music, so that anyone with a cellphone could become a musician. “Part of my philosophy is people are inherently creative,” he said.

To pursue that goal, he cofounded a software company, Smule, which makes applications that turn iPhones into simple musical instruments.

Stephen Tramontozzi, who teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and plays double bass in the San Francisco Symphony, questions whether i- Phone instruments can viscerally affect an audience the same way as the vibrations of traditional instruments in a concert hall.

“The response of traditional instruments is so subtle to the movement and the sensitivities of the being playing it, so it therefore can express much, much more and be more touching than something that produces sound electronically,” he said.

The Stanford orchestra is studying the potential of more complex iPhone instruments and pushing the limits of the type of music that can be made with them.

Professor Wang hopes to someday host a concert with musicians and amateurs from across the globe playing their iPhones all at once.

“A concert anywhere, anytime,” he said. “Let’s jam.”


Playing multiple iPhones at a concert. iPhones may be the first instrument millions carry in their pockets. / PETER DASILVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES