Beetlejuice on oboe: Danny Elfman's shivery Tim Burton scores come to SF Symphony - 48 hills

"There is a particular shade of twilight that belongs to Tim Burton and Danny Elfman alone. The sky is bruised purple, the air feels a little electric, and somewhere just offstage, a carousel is turning too slowly. The music, from their 40-year collaboration, is playful and mournful at the same time-like remembering childhood and realizing how impossible it is to get back inside it."

"The San Francisco Symphony, the Symphony Chorus, and violinist Sandy Cameron perform selections from Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Frankenweenie, and more, accompanied by projected storyboards and concept art. In the concert hall, these scores stand on their own emotional architecture, revealing how irony, sentiment, and wonder hold the films together. Yet the event is more than a celebration of a long-running collaboration."

""My most significant connection goes back to the very beginning, in the '70s, when I spent seven years with The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo... and our first really indoor theatrical performances were all in San Francisco," Elfman told 48 Hills. "The Alcazar Theatre and our San Francisco runs were crucial because that was where we could actually get a theater and put on a show for four weeks. That was a massive deal to us.""

Danny Elfman and Tim Burton's four-decade collaboration produces music that is both playful and mournful, evoking childhood nostalgia and irretrievable memory. A multimedia concert at Davies Symphony Hall presents Elfman's film scores with the San Francisco Symphony, the Symphony Chorus, and violinist Sandy Cameron, paired with projected storyboards and concept art. The program features selections from Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Frankenweenie, and more. The performance highlights the scores' emotional architecture—irony, sentiment, and wonder—and also serves as a homecoming linked to Elfman's early San Francisco theatrical roots with The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.

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