Photo: A Pairings @ Ted’s event featuring Illuminarts. Photo via Illuminarts’ Facebook page.

There is so much classical material relating to witches, witchcraft, magic and terror that it would be a shame not to take advantage of it on Halloween. Amanda Crider, artistic director of 2015 Knight Arts Challenge finalist Illuminarts, did just that, teaming up with Knight Arts grantee YoungArts for its Pairings @ Ted’s series. The result was a unique show on the top floor of Miami’s restored Bacardi building, which showcased impressive musical talent alongside culinary counterparts from Starr Catering Group.

The project was successful and brought home once again the importance of creating (and maintaining) alternative (and original) venues for the promotion (and appreciation) of music performed by top-notch local talent. Crider is a case in point. The young mezzo-soprano just returned from New York, where she earned rave reviews in the world premiere of composer Keeril Makan’s “Persona.” Based on the Ingmar Bergman film of the same name, the three-character opera–directed by Jay Scheib, who also wrote the libretto–gave Crider the opportunity to perform the work’s only singing role. Crider played the part of Alma the nurse, a caretaker to a famous actress who has become mute for no apparent reason, with whom Alma develops a symbiotic relationship.

Accompanied by baritone Gabriel Preisser and the Musimelange string quartet (who are the originators of this type of musical-culinary combo), dessert arrived in the form of a parade of “macabre music” by artists in full Halloween garb. The short, intelligent program began with the music from “Peer Gynt”: “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” an introduction that sparked the imagination. The subsequent choice of “Il tramonto” was risky but appropriate and illustrative–Ottorino Respghi’s beautiful, seldom-performed opus is so much more gruesome and fitting for Halloween than one would think, masked as it is by the strings that support the female voice. The piece was the object of an inspired performance by Crider, for whom it is clearly a personal favorite. Likewise, Samuel Barber’s ominous “Dover Beach,” sung by Preisser, was another original, unexpected choice. It is one of the American master’s most seductive compositions. Though somber, it added a somewhat optimistic note to the spectral evening, which scored another success with the quartet’s rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre.”

The finale consisted of four Lieder by Franz Schubert. Though a complete evening could have been filled with the Viennese genius’ macabre songs, such as “Der Zwerg” and “Im Walde (Waldesnacht)” (just two among the many that evoke the horror of the darkest Romanticism), two sufficed: “Erlkönig,” sung by Crider in what was the program’s best number, and “Death and the Maiden,” in a much less solemn version than usual, performed by an irreverent Preisser. “The Trout” opened the Schubert section and “An die Musik” brought it to a close, leaving listeners hungry for more.

Given their success and promise, such undertakings deserve support. The YoungArts campus, standing in the midst of a thriving cultural area, has the facilities necessary to stage this kind of alternative musical event. To retain audiences, it needs to keep up constant programming. YoungArts forms part of a map that is slowly and laboriously filling out, stimulating and satisfying the needs of new and diverse audiences in a culturally emerging city whose artistic future is the responsibility of its residents, be they artists, promoters or patrons.