The 7:30 pm “A Spooky Evening of Fun” concert at McClelland Hall on the old MacMurray College campus will be “a little more laid back,” Allman said, with “people at the table” on par with the musicians.

“They are going to surround us,” he said. “The audience will actually be quite close – but distant. “

This audience is also invited to dress up for the concert.

“I will be and the orchestra will be ‘in costume,” Allman said. “We encourage the public to come in costume, adults and children alike. We will have a costume competition for the best costume” with categories for the orchestra. , adults and children.

“You don’t have to come in disguise, but the audience is encouraged,” Allman said.

The Halloween concert is sort of a tradition for the symphony, with Allman offering a list of Halloween-themed sets when the holidays fall on a concert night.

“We were supposed to have done this a year ago, when Halloween was actually a Saturday,” he said. “So now it’s Halloween eve, which I think works too.”

Everyone was disappointed when last year’s concert turned into a virtual business because of the pandemic, Allman said. This year, the musicians have been planning for a while.

“They love it,” he said of being able to wear Halloween costumes. “They love it. They go. Last month or so they were talking about ‘What are you going to wear?'”

There is also the question of what they will play.

The evening will begin with “Night on the Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky, who is perhaps best known for her turn in Disney’s “Fantasia”.

“It’s an essential Halloween piece,” Allman said.

Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Puppet” – the theme of the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” television series which ran from 1955 to 1965 – will follow before the short Neal Hefti theme of the “Batman” television series enlightens. a bit of the atmosphere.

“La Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint-Saëns will feature principal violinist and principal violin Chenoa Murphy.

“Instead of being set to E, it’s set to flat E, which makes it a little weird and scary,” Allman said. “This chord gives what the musician calls a tritone between A and E flat, which has long been considered a kind of evil interval – the devil’s interval in the Middle Ages.”

“In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg and excerpts from the soundtrack of “Jurassic Park” by John Williams will complete the first part of the concert.

“In the Hall of the Mountain King,” which is taken from the musical version of the Norwegian folk tale “Peer Gynt,” Grieg “is very sweet,” Allman said. “He just builds, builds and builds; it’s a little scary too.

The music for “Jurassic Park”, on the other hand, is “not that scary, it’s very melodic,” Allman said.

Hector Berlioz’s “March to the Scaffold” opens the second part of the concert and is spooky in its own way, Allman said.

“It depicts the cut of the head of the lover of the person telling the story,” he said. “You hear the execution and you hear the head bouncing in the basket, the pizzicato (pinching) in the strings.”

After this somewhat dark turn, the orchestra will ease the mood with the audience participation in Vic Mizzy’s theme song from the TV series “The Addams Family” before venturing into the music of the classic “Psycho” by Hitchcock, then Jonathan Robert Wright’s “Baby Shark”, which earns its place in the lineup – much like the dinosaurs of “Jurassic Park” – speaking of a shark.

“It’s a short, fun piece,” Allman said. “Especially for children. We have dinosaurs in the first half, sharks in the second.

The selections for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Phantom of the Opera’ will revert to the creepy – “‘Phantom’ is its own version of the creepy,” Allman said. “There’s a lot of familiar music in this medley” – before the Williams-themed night from the movie “Superman” ends for a costumed nod to pop culture.

“There are some songs here that are really easy for (musicians) to play,” Allman said. “Shorter and lighter pieces. But there are also several pieces that are a challenge to play. It’s kind of a combination.