There is a version of Brian Cox that existed before the BBC series, before the Royal Society fellowship, before the published books — a version playing keyboards for a rock band called Dare and doing session and live work for D:Ream while a Physics degree from Manchester was quietly forming in the background. That earlier Cox, who had already decided at age twelve, reading Carl Sagan’s Cosmos in Oldham, England, that the universe required his full attention, is the animating spirit behind Emergence, the most ambitious live science production he has yet written. Professor Brian Cox brings Emergence to the Majestic Theatre San Antonio on Tuesday, February 2, 2027 — doors at 6:30 PM, show at 7:30 PM CT.
About Professor Brian Cox
Today Cox holds the title of Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester and serves as the Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science. He was appointed OBE in 2010 and CBE in 2020 for services to the promotion of science, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016. His BBC television work — Wonders of the Solar System (Peabody Award-winning), Wonders of the Universe, The Planets, Forces of Nature — has reached audiences no lecture hall could match, and his BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage, co-hosted with Robin Ince, has run for well over a decade. His previous live tour, Horizons, played to nearly half a million audience members worldwide — establishing Cox as one of the rare science communicators who can fill a theater the way a headline musician does.
About Emergence
Emergence opens with a moment from 1610 — Johannes Kepler on Prague’s Charles Bridge, noticing a snowflake and asking why snowflakes are six-cornered. From that single question, the show spirals outward through water molecules, atoms, quarks and electrons, quantum theory, cosmology, biology, philosophy, and history, asking at every scale: how does complexity emerge from simplicity? The production features the largest and most advanced LED screens available, paired with high-end sound and lighting design, in a collaboration among scientists, musicians, filmmakers, and graphic artists.
Cox has described the show as his most ambitious to date: “I’ve loved creating Emergence — it’s the most ambitious live show I’ve ever written. I’ve been very lucky to collaborate with a wonderful group of scientists, musicians, filmmakers and graphic artists to bring cosmology, biology, philosophy and history to the largest and most advanced LED screens available, with the best sound and lights I could find. I hope the show is an all-encompassing experience, and I hope it leaves everyone, whether they love science or music or history, or simply contemplating the beauty of Nature, with something new to think about.”
The Guardian called it “a jaw-dropping reminder that human life is both irrelevant and hugely precious.”
About the Majestic Theatre
The San Antonio stop lands at one of Texas’s great historic rooms. The Majestic Theatre opened June 14, 1929, designed by architect John Eberson for Karl Hoblitzelle’s Interstate Theatres. At the time it was the first theatre in Texas to be fully air-conditioned, the largest in the state, and the second largest in the United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. Restored in 1989 to its current 2,264-seat configuration, the Majestic sits at 224 E. Houston Street in downtown San Antonio — a building that has held nearly a century’s worth of spectacle and still knows how to frame it.
Tickets
Professor Brian Cox: Emergence plays the Majestic Theatre San Antonio on Tuesday, February 2, 2027. Doors open at 6:30 PM CT; the show begins at 7:30 PM CT. Tickets are on sale now — get yours at the link below.