“When Columbus Symphony principal pops conductor Stuart Chafetz first led an orchestra in accompaniment of Tim Burton’s 1993 movie ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,’ he was unprepared to encounter its passionate fan base,” writes Peter Tonguette in Thursday’s (10/17) Columbus Dispatch (OH). “ ‘People showed up as Jack the Pumpkin King, Sally, the Mayor, Lock, Shock and Barrel,’ he said. On Saturday, when the Columbus Symphony accompanies a screening in the Ohio Theatre, central Ohio fans of the stop-motion animated movie can dress up as those or other characters…. While the PG-rated film is shown, the vocal tracks of the movie will be heard as the symphony performs the score by Danny Elfman.… During the screening of ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,’ the audience is welcome to sing along, but the conductor will be focused on guiding the symphony in support of songs performed by various animated characters. Chafetz describes Elfman’s score as unusually sophisticated [and] praises the grace notes of the music. ‘There are all these really funny, creepy sounds of the characters,’ he said. ‘For some reason, those little tiny things just get me more than sort of the big, expected stuff. Just the subtleties—I just love it.’ ”
Posted October 18, 2019
