THE DEVIL AT RICHARDSON: Princeton University Sinfonia’s annual Halloween concert on October 30 makes the most of the eerie holiday.

Richardson Auditorium is the venue for the Princeton University Sinfonia’s annual Halloween concert on Thursday, October 30 at 7:30 p.m. Ruth Ochs will lead the 75-minute program “full of haunts, skeletons, and spectral sounds,” according to a press release.

The centerpiece will be Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre. The symphonic poem is based upon the composer’s song celebrating the midnight dance of skeletons to the sounds of a solo violin tuned to emphasize the “devil’s” interval of a tritone. The program will open with Emilie Mayer’s Faust Overture. Mayer was a prolific composer of instrumental music in the late-19th century Germany, yet only few details of her career survive.

Eric Rucker, a native of Michigan and a second-year prospective physics major at Princeton University, composed On Harmony as a Timbral Quality. The new work brings “a fresh perspective to tonal orchestral music through the combination of orchestration and my own harmonic language.” Rucker said.

The program also features an excerpt from a rarely-heard early symphony by Luigi Boccherini, Symphony in D minor, “La casa del diavolo,” a medley of music from the musical Wicked, and selections from Aram Khachaturian’s Masquerade Suite.

The Princeton University Sinfonia includes over 80 undergraduate and graduate students. Tickets to this concert ($16 general admission/$6 students) are available at tickets.princeton.edu, by phone during afternoon business hours (609-258-9220), or in the lobby of Richardson Auditorium starting 45 minutes prior to the performance. For more information visit music.princeton.edu and sinfonia.princeton.edu.