The Nightmare Before Christmas: Live Orchestra

Tim Burton's stop-motion classic gets the concert treatment on October 3, when a live orchestra performs Danny Elfman's score underneath a full screening of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's one of the more inventive things to do in Los Angeles this weekend for anyone who has the soundtrack memorized and wants to hear it played live while Jack Skellington plots his takeover of Christmas Town on the big screen.

What the show is

The film hasn't loosened its grip on audiences since 1993, and it's become an odd little tradition to pull it out twice a year: once for Halloween, once for Christmas. This performance leans into that double life by landing in early October, right as the city's Halloween calendar starts filling up. Instead of a plain screening, the movie's audio track is stripped of its score and replaced with a live orchestra playing Elfman's music in real time, synced to the picture. The visual gags and dialogue stay exactly as Henry Selick shot them; what changes is that the strings, brass and percussion under "This Is Halloween" and "Jack's Lament" are happening a few dozen feet from your seat instead of coming out of a speaker.

It's a format that plays well for stop-motion in particular. Elfman's score carries a huge share of the film's mood, and hearing it performed live sharpens details that get flattened in a standard theatrical mix. Longtime fans of the movie tend to notice new textures in songs they've heard a hundred times.

Where it is

The show is at the Janet & Ray Scherr Forum, one of the performance spaces inside the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. It's a mid-sized proscenium theater built for exactly this kind of orchestral and touring production, with reliable sightlines and acoustics tuned for live music rather than amplified sound. The venue regularly hosts film-with-orchestra programs, so the sound mix for a night like this is a known quantity rather than a one-off experiment.

Practical info

When: Saturday, October 3 Where: Janet & Ray Scherr Forum, 2100 E Thousand Oaks Blvd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91362

The listing doesn't publish a specific curtain time or ticket price, so check the venue's own page before you drive out, especially if you're timing a dinner around it. The Civic Arts Plaza has its own attached parking structure, which is the easiest way in if you're coming from the 101.

This one sits a bit outside the usual list of LA events this weekend, closer to the northwest edge of the metro than downtown, but it's an easy trip up the 101 for anyone chasing seasonal programming before the rest of the city's Halloween events crowd the calendar. For more seasonal picks around town, browse the arts and culture calendar or the full roster of things happening in Los Angeles.