On Halloween night, the TCL Chinese Theatre did something it almost never does. It went quiet. No premiere, no red carpet, no flashing bulbs. Just a string quartet on a stage covered in pumpkins and thousands of flickering candles, playing the scariest music ever written in front of the most famous curtain in Hollywood.
The concert was part of Candlelight, the Fever series that stages classical performances in landmark rooms lit entirely by candlelight. For October 31, the program was Halloween Classics, performed by the Orchid Quartet in the main auditorium of the TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
A movie palace turned concert hall
I have photographed premieres in that room for years. I have never seen it like this.
The theatre’s red curtain, woven with gold palms and bamboo, fills the entire wall behind the stage. In front of it, the quartet sat in a sea of candles, with autumn leaves and pumpkins worked into the floor around them. The effect is not decoration. The candlelight changes how you listen. The room leans in.
The audience sat in the same seats where generations of moviegoers have watched premieres, and for about sixty minutes nobody reached for a phone. The doors close at showtime and there is no late entry, which keeps the spell intact.
The program
The Orchid Quartet opened with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” reworked for strings, and the arrangement works better than it has any right to. From there the night moved between film scores and the classical pieces that invented horror music long before movies existed:
- “Thriller” (Michael Jackson)
- Funeral March of a Marionette (Charles Gounod)
- String Quartet No. 8 (Dmitri Shostakovich)
- “Tubular Bells” from The Exorcist (Mike Oldfield)
- Stranger Things theme (Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein)
- Beetlejuice main title (Danny Elfman)
- The Addams Family theme (Vic Mizzy)
- Halloween theme (John Carpenter)
- Prelude from Psycho (Bernard Herrmann)
- “Ghostbusters” (Ray Parker Jr.)
- Danse Macabre (Camille Saint-Saëns)
- Night on Bald Mountain (Modest Mussorgsky)
- “Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show
- Suite from The Nightmare Before Christmas (Danny Elfman)
- In the Hall of the Mountain King (Edvard Grieg)
The Psycho prelude in a room built for movies was the high point. Herrmann wrote those strings to be felt as much as heard, and four players a few feet from the front row delivered exactly that. The Shostakovich quartet was the darkest stretch of the night, a reminder that the scariest piece on the program was written about real history, not monsters.
Should you go to a Candlelight concert?
Yes, and Halloween is the strongest version of it I have seen. Candlelight runs year-round in Los Angeles with rotating programs in venues across the city, and each concert lasts about sixty minutes. Tickets are sold through Fever. Arrive early, because doors close when the music starts and late entry is not allowed.
For one night, Hollywood’s loudest room became its quietest. That alone was worth the ticket.
Also this week: Fleurs de Villes turned Greystone Mansion into a Gilded Age floral ball.
