UIC Orchestra Presents Halloween Concert in Costume

The University of Illinois at Chicago Orchestra will kick off the Halloween season with a concert featuring ominous music and costumed musicians Thursday, Oct. 25.

Free and open to the public, “Abnormal Minds” takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Gottlieb Hall of Merit School of Music, 38 S. Peoria St.

The program will begin with a traditional performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major by piano instructor Ivana Bukvich.

Next, the orchestra will appear in Halloween costumes to perform Bernard Herrmann’s spooky score to the film “Psycho” and Mussorgsky’s menacing “Night on Bald Mountain.”

“We encourage the audience to come in costume and join in the fun,” said Daniel Black, orchestra director.

The UIC Orchestra consists of UIC students, staff and faculty with musical training. Black, a 2011 fellow of the Aspen Music Festival, is also music director of the Rockford Symphony Youth Orchestra and has guest-conducted the Rockford Symphony Orchestra, Champaign/Urbana Symphony, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra.

UIC ranks among the nation’s leading research universities and is Chicago’s largest university with 27,500 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state’s major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas around the world.