Having been conductor of the Boston Pops for three decades now, Keith Lockhart rarely finds himself on musical terra incognita with the orchestra. However, when the orchestra collaborates with Boston-based mariachi singer and bandleader Veronica Robles and her ensemble during this November’s Day of the Dead event, Lockhart knows he’s going to be out of his wheelhouse — and he’s excited about it.
“It’s rare that I look at a program and see so much music that we have never done,” he said in a recent phone interview. “That’s good, though. It keeps me awake.”
Typically, the Boston Pops’s presence at Symphony Hall is limited to the Spring Pops season after the Boston Symphony Orchestra season ends, and the Holiday Pops series in December. This fall, however, the Pops will be performing two mini-series: one in September, mainly focused on film music, and another around Halloween.
The September series kicks off this coming Thursday and Friday with screenings of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” with the Pops performing John Williams’s score along with the music. This will mark the first time the 2015 film, the first in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy, has been screened in concert at Symphony Hall. Saturday and Sunday bring evening-length tributes to Williams’s scores for the “Harry Potter” film series, with live narration by English stage actress Scarlett Strallen.
The Pops will also be appearing in Sept. 21’s “Concert for the City,” for which details have yet to be announced, and a Sept. 20 “Cirque Goes to the Cinema” performance with Cirque de la Symphonie, which features live circus acts on the Symphony Hall stage while the Pops perform music from various films.
“It’s a bit of a stretch to do it, because Symphony Hall is not a theatrical stage,” Lockhart said. The technical directors were nervous the first time the Pops collaborated with Cirque de la Symphonie, said Lockhart, but they’ve worked together a few times now and have it down to a routine. “We push the orchestra way upstage, and put the biggest extension we have on, and have a rather large downstage area, at least by our standards,” he said.
The Halloween mini-season consists of two screenings of Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (Oct. 31 and Nov. 2), as well as the “Celebrating El Día de Muertos” event with the Pops and Robles’s all-woman mariachi ensemble, the first ensemble of its kind in New England in a genre historically dominated by men.
BSO president and CEO Chad Smith originally floated the Día de Muertos idea, according to Lockhart. “He’s much more experienced in these Día de Muertos programs, because he’s been working in LA,” where the Mexican community is large and influential, he said. “Our idea was to engage some of the Latino community in doing something that was really different for us, and involve local artists.”
The Veracruz regional music tradition of “son jarocho” will also be represented on the program, via Mexican classical guitarist Zaira Meneses. The celebration is scheduled to include the premiere of a new piece by Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, and a suite from Michael Giacchino’s score to the 2017 Dia de Muertos-themed Disney/Pixar film “Coco.”
The Halloween bloc also includes a one-night-only (Oct. 30) screening of the spine-chilling 1922 German Expressionist silent film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” with live organ music performed by Brett Miller. “It’s very scary,” said Lockhart. “It’s beautifully shot, and you can see that now, because they’ve digitally restored the prints. So bring your popcorn!”
BOSTON POPS
At Symphony Hall. Sept. 5-8; Sept. 20; Oct. 30-Nov. 2. www.bostonpops.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.