At the Meyerson, style begins before the first note. On September 26, Idina Menzel joins the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for a black-tie gala where Broadway drama, symphonic scale and pageantry converge. The evening promises spectacle in the hall, electricity onstage and the rare thrill of hearing familiar songs entirely anew.
The gala announces itself in layers. First comes the Meyerson at dusk, its glass and limestone glowing above Flora Street. Then the arrivals, the black ties, the sweep of evening gowns and the sense of occasion as a room assembles for something singular. By the time guests move from reception to dinner and toward the concert hall, the evening has established its own rhythm.
Four Preston Hollow residents stand at the center of the occasion. Allison and Brett Brodnax serve as Gala Chairs. Linda L. Burk, M.D., and John R. Gilmore, M.D., serve as Honorary Co-Chairs. Together, they lead the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's largest annual fundraising event, pairing a celebratory night with the opportunity to advance an institution whose work reaches far beyond one performance.
At the heart of this year's program is Idina Menzel, the Tony Award-winning performer whose voice carried Rent, Wicked and Frozen into memory. She appears with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Enrico Lopez-Yañez, Principal Conductor, Dallas Symphony Presents.
"The gala is not typically a pop performer," Lopez-Yañez said when he spoke with us. "So that makes this one really stand out from the get-go." Dallas is among the first stops on Menzel's limited symphonic tour, and the collaboration will be a first for both artist and orchestra.
The pairing gives the evening a singular glamour. It is theatrical anticipation, built from the entrance onward and carried into the hall. Lopez-Yañez describes a full evening of dinner, performance and afterparty, with "glitz and glam to be had by everyone." Yet the most compelling pageantry may arrive when the room goes dark, the orchestra settles and a familiar voice enters a space designed to let sound travel without mediation. For one night, fashion, architecture and music become parts of the same composition, each heightening the next with elegance, energy and theatrical flair before the opening note sounds.
The collaboration enlarges songs audiences may believe they already know. A Broadway production carries about 10 musicians, Lopez-Yañez explains. At the Meyerson, Menzel will sing with an orchestra 10 times that scale. Strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion do more than add force. They uncover texture, change the weight of a lyric and allow a familiar melody to arrive with fresh proportions.
"You are now getting to hear a completely fresh, a completely expanded version of these hit songs," he says. Music known first through theater, film and countless singalongs will enter an acoustically designed space through instruments, not through speakers. Every phrase can breathe, bloom and gather even greater weight in the hall.
The transformation is technical, but its effect is emotional. Lopez-Yañez speaks of musicians and audience members lighting up together when Menzel reaches material they recognize. The orchestra has played some of these songs with other artists. It has never performed them with her. That shared awareness, he believes, can create the unrepeatable charge that defines live performance.
"At the core it's a passion and love for the music," he says. "That's when you move people's hearts, move people's souls, and make them feel something special that is a moment in time that cannot be replicated."
Menzel has spent a career giving voice to characters who refuse to be contained. With the Dallas Symphony Orchestra behind her, the music itself may seem ready to do the same and, for one night, defy gravity.
The black-tie event takes place Saturday, September 26, 2026, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora Street, Dallas, Texas 75201. The evening begins at six o'clock. Event information is available at dallassymphony.org.