The Philharmonic scores a horror classic: Get Out in Concert at Geffen Hall

Michael Abels's score for Get Out gets the full orchestra treatment over Halloween week, starting Wednesday at Lincoln Center.

There's a particular kind of quiet that settles over a concert hall right before a film starts, and this week the New York Philharmonic is betting it can make that quiet feel unsettling. Starting Wednesday, October 28, the orchestra plays Michael Abels's score for Get Out live, under the film, in the Wu Tsai Theater at David Geffen Hall.

The run is four nights, Wednesday through Saturday, October 28–31, at 7:30 PM, so the last performance lands on Halloween. Anthony Parnther conducts while the film plays on the big screen overhead. The program belongs to the Philharmonic's Art of the Score series, the strand of the season that puts the orchestra under the movies. Check nyphil.org for tickets and availability.

Abels is the draw here as much as the film. The Philharmonic's artist page calls him a Pulitzer Prize–winning, Emmy- and Grammy-nominated composer, best known for his scores to Jordan Peele's Get Out, Us and Nope. Get Out was the one that introduced him to most moviegoers.

That's what makes a live performance interesting. Watching a film at home, the score works on you without asking for attention. In a hall, with a full orchestra in front of the screen, you can watch the strings set up a cue before it lands and see exactly where the tension is coming from. This series exists for that sort of thing, and a horror score is a natural fit for Halloween week.

It also lands in a big season for the orchestra. This is Gustavo Dudamel's first season as the Philharmonic's music and artistic director; he took up the post on September 1. Dudamel isn't on the podium for this one, as Parnther conducts, but the Get Out run is part of the same season's offering, and it's a reminder that the Phil's calendar under its new leader runs from Beethoven to blockbuster scores.

The Philharmonic plays Manhattan more than anywhere else in our records, which is about as unsurprising as a stat gets. Lincoln Center is home. But a home orchestra still has to give a city reasons to come back, and a Halloween-week horror screening with a live orchestra is a pretty good one, especially for people who don't usually buy a ticket to Geffen Hall.

So if you've been meaning to see the renovated hall and never found the right excuse, this might be it. Bring someone who hasn't seen the film. Listen to how the orchestra gets you there.

Sources: NY Phil — Get Out in Concert, Oct 28–31 (nyphil.org); NY Phil — Michael Abels, Guest Artist (nyphil.org); NY Phil — The Art of the Score (nyphil.org); NY Phil — Group discounts (performance times) (nyphil.org); New York Philharmonic — Official Site (nyphil.org); David Geffen Hall - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)