Greenville audiences will get to hear Elmer Bernstein's iconic Ghostbusters score the way it was meant to be heard next Tuesday, Oct. 27, when a live orchestra performs the music in real time while the original 1984 film plays on a massive high-definition screen inside the Peace Center Concert Hall.
The production, called Ghostbusters in Concert, pairs a full screening of the classic comedy with live musicians synchronized to every scream, proton-pack blast and marshmallow catastrophe on screen, according to peacecenter.org. The original screenplay was written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, with Ivan Reitman producing and directing, the Peace Center notes. Danielle Jagelski will conduct the ensemble, per Schirmer Theatrical's concert program listing her as conductor and music director for the tour.
Reconstructing a four-decade-old film score for live performance is no small task, and the job fell in part to someone with a personal stake in getting it right. Peter M. Bernstein, son of Academy Award-winning composer Elmer Bernstein and himself an orchestrator on the original film, joined the creative team to help rebuild his father's music for the stage, according to Pollstar. The score itself has been, in the production's own words, “artfully reconstructed” for the live-to-film format, per Ghostbusters in Concert's website, which also credits Schirmer Theatrical, part of Wise Music Group, and Black Ink Presents as producers.
A Tour With Some Fuzzy Math
Exactly how many stops the tour includes depends on who's counting. Ghostbustersinconcert.com describes it as a 35-city North American tour that launched Sept. 18, while the Greenville Journal describes the tour as visiting 39 cities from the West Coast to the East Coast. Either way, Greenville is far from the only stop. The tour already passed through Eugene, Oregon's Hult Center on Sept. 20, where, according to Eugene Weekly, a 13-person orchestra played an arrangement of the film's original soundtrack — a detail that doesn't quite match the Greenville Journal's description of a 12-member ensemble performing the Greenville show's orchestral score.
The production also rolled through Buffalo on Oct. 16, where the University at Buffalo Center for the Arts hosted a 7:30 p.m. performance with tickets running $44, $49 and $59 plus fees, per the university's announcement. Charleston's Martha and John M. Rivers Performance Hall is slated to host the tour on Oct. 25, just two days ahead of the Greenville date, per Pollstar's reporting.
Why Movie Concerts Are Having a Moment
John Kinsner, chief executive of Black Ink Presents, said the live-film concert format has grown dramatically over the past decade. Advances in technology have made these productions more accessible, Kinsner said, and movies like Ghostbusters attract new generations of fans while retaining the affection of people who grew up with the original film, he said. Black Ink Presents produces roughly 600 film and video game concerts worldwide each year, according to its own account relayed by Kinsner, and the company's slate includes concert presentations of Labyrinth and Hook alongside Ghostbusters.
That growth tracks with a broader trend across the live-event industry. What were probably just 10 to 15 such shows annually back in 2010 has ballooned to roughly 2,000 shows worldwide today spanning an estimated 50 to 75 different intellectual properties, Kinsner estimated, according to The Hustle. These shows now fill concert halls, amphitheaters and convention spaces around the globe, and Kinsner attributed the rising popularity of fan events to the spread of social media and cosplay culture.
What to Expect at the Peace Center
Kinsner described the concert format simply: a full screening of the original 1984 Ghostbusters with a live ensemble performing Elmer Bernstein's score in real time, letting audiences experience a familiar movie in a new format while hearing the music performed live. The Peace Center is leaning into that nostalgia, describing the Oct. 27 show as an experience that fans “will want to share with the next generation.” Audiences are encouraged to come dressed as their favorite characters in cosplay style for the occasion.
Since the Ghostbusters concert premiered back in October 2018, it has been performed in cities around the world, per Pollstar's reporting. For Greenville, tickets and additional information are available through the Peace Center's box office at 864-467-3000 or online at peacecenter.org.
