The KSO celebrates the Mexican festival Day of the Dead. Audience/musician face-painting, masks, candles and a large public ofrenda add to the atmospheric, ominous opuses as the KSO offers a frightfully fun evening of classics, premieres and Hispanic favorites and culture.

The program opens with Berlioz’s “Dream of the Witches Sabbath” followed by Silvestre Revueltas serpent-inspired Sensemayá. John Corigliano’s opera The Ghost of Versailles (with its Mozart and Rossini quotations) is heard in the Tristate premiere of the Phantasmagoria suite. Claude Bolling’s contemplative “Mexicaine” from his Concerto for Guitar and Jazz Piano Trio, closes the first half, as the audience and orchestra pass candles creating an eerie ambience before placing their memorial candles at the public ofrenda on the plaza at intermission. The second half opens with Alberto Ginastera’s diabolical “Toccata Concertata” from his first piano concerto featuring pianist May Phang. Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 follows with José Moncayo’s Huapango and closing with Danny Elfman’s creepy yet beautiful “Pianos” from Serenada Schizophrana (also a regional premiere). Zequinha de Abreu’s Tico-Tico non Fuba is the slated enthusiastic, rollicking encore.