A hauntingly beautiful array of symphonies took over the Brooks Center on Oct. 26 as Clemson University’s orchestra performed renditions of heroic and villainous film scores for its annual Halloween Spooktacular.
The student musicians, dressed in Halloween costumes, opened the show with Richard Strauss’ classic “Also sprach Zarathustra,” introducing every section of the instrumental assembly.
Following the spooky introduction, the lighting turned purple to fit the theme of the next tune, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from “The Little Mermaid.” To add to the theatrics the original animation embraces, Paisley Hodges, an architecture major at Clemson, performed the vocals.
The ensemble played a Mozart piece once the purple light faded, the lighting growing more intense as the music swelled.
The rest of the show included audio of iconic character lines for the transitions between songs to set the mood for the next musical composition.
A Joker and Batman sequence, including a projection of the Bat Signal on the backstage wall, provided students on the drums their time to shine, as the tracks included heavy bass.
The orchestra’s conductor introduced herself to mark the halfway point of the concert, explaining her costume as Professor McGonagall from “Harry Potter.” She thanked her performers, mentioning that the 120 students had 12 pieces lined up for the evening, encompassing a grand total of 1,152,000 notes.
She later welcomed a child from the audience onto the stage to guest-conduct the orchestra, which the crowd adored.
As a snippet of Wednesday Addams’ voice played over the speaker, a cello was brought out for the theme song from “The Addams Family” movies.
The young guest conductor was then able to choose two new child directors to guide the musicians through their next song.
When the heavy breathing of Darth Vader took over the room, the lights shifted to intimidating shades of red, and the orchestra began to play the “Imperial March” from “Star Wars.” For the softer parts of the musical work, the lights fluctuated through hues of blue, representing Luke Skywalker.
After taking a professional selfie that included the crowd of onlookers, a choir set foot on the stage as the instruments launched into the “Avatar” theme song, composed by James Horner.
Marching into the “Pirates of the Caribbean” theme song, a student dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow ran among the attendees holding a message in a bottle, creating an interactive visual.
Following music from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” featuring a solo from singer Jennifer Alynn-Perri, the conductor joked with the listeners that their acceptance to Hogwarts would depend on their attendance at future Clemson orchestra concerts.
With that, the instrumentalists executed a set of “Harry Potter” songs, the lights changing colors in correspondence with each musical piece.
The performance ended with rousing applause from the audience, setting an overall tone of excitement for the upcoming holiday.
The students standing by the exit bid the audience farewell and handed out acceptance letters to Hogwarts to close out the Halloween Spooktacular and remind concertgoers of the orchestra’s Christmas symphony on Dec. 2.
