🗓️ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28 | 7:30 PM
📍BROWNING CENTER AT WSU
A Hocus Pocus in Concert night in Ogden starts the way the best Halloween plans do: lights down, screen glowing, and a full symphony orchestra drawing the first breath of John Debney’s score. On Wednesday, October 28, the Utah Symphony performs the complete original score live while the beloved 1993 film plays on a big screen above the stage at the Browning Center.
You know the scenes. Bette Midler belting “I Put a Spell on You” at the town Halloween party. Sarah Jessica Parker’s haunting “Come Little Children” drifting through Salem’s streets. The Sanderson sisters on broomsticks while Debney’s brass fanfares and choral accents swell beneath them. Now add a full orchestra, right there in the room, playing every note of that score in real time. The dialogue, sound effects, and songs stay on the film’s audio track. The orchestra replaces the recorded score. The difference is visceral. You feel the witches’ macabre waltz in your chest. The 15-minute finale lands with a weight no home speaker system can touch.
Debney wrote the entire score in two weeks after the original composer stepped away. He composed for a 92-piece orchestra and a female choir, weaving harpsichords and recorders through colonial Salem flashbacks before unleashing full symphonic power for the flight sequences and climax. The result launched a career that includes The Passion of the Christ, Elf, The Jungle Book, and The Greatest Showman. Hearing it performed live strips away three decades of compression and lets every instrument breathe.
If you were at The Goonies or Casablanca with the Utah Symphony, you already know what a live score does to a film you love. Hocus Pocus in Concert in Ogden is the Halloween version of that same magic. Bring the kids. Bring friends who think they’ve outgrown it. Wednesday, October 28 at 7:30 PM, Browning Center at WSU.
