Percussion Ensemble Halloween Concert

My picture from the audience

Our friends invited us to attend the Percussion Ensemble Halloween Concert at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville.  It sounded fun and I have never been to anything like it, so the girls and I decided to go with she and her girls.  It turned out to be a lot of fun and very entertaining for all ages!  There were fun stories to go along with the music, everyone was dressed up, and there were a lot of interesting instruments including even pots and pans and old wheels for one song.  The university has a stellar music program and just purchased an organ this year.  Here is what www.clarksvilleonline.com had to say about the concert quoting the director, Dr. David Steinquest.

“I absolutely knew then that the organ had to be the starting point for this year’s Percussion Ensemble Halloween Concert,” he said. “And no question, the very first thing on the program was going to be Bach’s Toccata in D minor. You can’t have an organ and not play it.”

The rumor about the organ turned out to be true, so at 6:00pm and 8:00pm on October 30th, the instrument will help usher in the strange blend of music and mayhem that has come to define this wildly popular community concert for the last 28 years. And as always, Steinquest and his band of APSU music faculty members will wear costumes to perform the Halloween-themed music in an eerily decorated concert hall inside the APSU Music/Mass Communication Building.
“It’s a very family-friendly concert, and it’s always a sell-out,” Steinquest said.
The evening’s program will feature old and new classical pieces, such as Igor Stravinsky’s “Sacrificial Dance,” Philip Glass’s film score for the movie “Dracula” and Bernard Herman’s terrifying composition for Alfred Hitchcock’s controversial 1960 film “Psycho.”

We were lucky to get in because it was sold out and we had no idea how popular it would be.  Luckily, we waited around and some people returned unused tickets or didn't pick up reserved ones and we ended up with enough tickets!  It was a fun evening!  I really liked the screen in the back that showed close-ups of performers or in the Dracula song showed footage of the movie.  We might have to go again next year and take the boys too!