A New Sleepy Hollow Musical Is Taking Over Disney Hall on Halloween Night

LOS ANGELES: Walt Disney Concert Hall is getting a headless visitor on Halloween. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has announced the cast for Headless, a new musical inspired by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The world-premiere concert preview will take place October 31 before a live orchestral screening of Marvel Studios’ Werewolf by Night, creating a double feature built for anyone who prefers their holiday with a full orchestra.

Michael Giacchino shares book, music and lyric duties with songwriters Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson. Giacchino is best known for film and television scores, including Up, The Incredibles and Lost, but Headless moves him into musical theater. The project returns to Washington Irving’s familiar town and characters while promising its own answer to what happened in Sleepy Hollow.

Walt Disney Concert Hall will host the world-premiere concert preview of Headless on October 31. Image: Leviclancy / CC0 1.0

Cody Jamison Strand will play Ichabod Crane, the anxious schoolmaster at the center of the legend. Joshua Boone takes the role of the Hessian, Kyle Selig plays Brom Bones and Katerina McCrimmon appears as Katrina Van Tassel. Daniel Klintworth serves as music director for the roughly 45-minute preview, while Michael and Maria Giacchino are producing the musical.

The casting gives the concert real theatrical weight. Strand is closely associated with The Book of Mormon, Selig has Broadway credits that include Mean Girls and McCrimmon has played Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. Boone brings screen and stage experience. This is not a table read placed in a grand room. It is a first public test of whether the songs and characters can carry a larger life.

A concert preview is different from a finished stage production. Audiences may hear a focused selection rather than every scene, design element or transition that would appear in a full musical. That incompleteness is part of the appeal. Los Angeles gets to encounter the material while it is still revealing its shape, before a future production fixes every choice in place.

After intermission, Sarah Hicks will conduct the LA Phil during Werewolf by Night as the 2022 special plays on screen. Giacchino directed and composed the project, which drew inspiration from classic black-and-white monster films. Hearing the music performed live makes the score visible in a way home viewing cannot. A sudden string attack or brass entrance becomes a physical event in the room.

The pairing also shows two sides of the same artist. Headless asks Giacchino to build characters through songs intended for a stage. Werewolf by Night uses orchestral music to shape suspense around edited images. Putting them together turns the evening into more than a seasonal playlist. It becomes a demonstration of how one composer moves between theater, film and concert performance.

Sleepy Hollow remains adaptable because the original story leaves room around its mystery. The Headless Horseman can be supernatural, a trick or both at once. Ichabod can be comic, sympathetic and vain in the same scene. Musicals thrive on characters who say one thing and sing another, which makes Irving’s uncertain world a promising source rather than simply a famous title.

The LA Phil lists the program at approximately one and a half to two hours, with tickets beginning at $44 at the time of publication. Programs, artists and availability can change, so audiences should use the orchestra’s official event page for current details. What is confirmed is unusual enough: a new musical’s first concert, a Marvel live score and Halloween night inside one of Los Angeles’ defining buildings.

The evening may also give Headless something new musicals rarely receive at the beginning: an audience spanning theater fans, soundtrack listeners and Marvel viewers. Those groups do not always buy the same tickets. If the songs connect across them, the concert could create momentum for a staged future. If they do not, the preview still offers the creative team a rare chance to hear where attention rises and falls in a full hall.

The strongest holiday programming does more than decorate familiar material with pumpkins. It finds a form that changes how the story feels. Headless will arrive before anyone knows whether it becomes a full production, while Werewolf by Night returns with its score pulled out of the screen and into the hall. For one night, Disney Hall will function as theater, cinema and haunted house at once.