OK, hands up if you’ve seen a bassoon player do a solo in front of an orchestra.

Now, keep your hand up if you’ve seen one do it dressed up as Elvis. Hmm, not so many, huh?

But that’s how Francine Peterson, principal bassoon with the Northwest Sinfonietta, will be spending tonight and Saturday evening. Peterson’s the soloist for “Dead Elvis,” a 1993 chamber piece that fuses classical with rock and blues to tell how the gyrating rock star sold his soul to Hollywood and the devil for fame. It fits perfectly with the program’s other half – Stravinsky’s 1918 “The Soldier’s Tale,” whose hero also strikes a deal with the man in the red horns. The concert will play in both Seattle and Tacoma.

“This is so cool,” says Peterson. “It’s the kind of piece every bassoonist dreams of playing.” Backstage after rehearsal in the Rialto, Peterson’s half-stripped off her white pantsuit with shimmery gold lapels, and is yanking at the long white cowboy boots.

And if you wanted a classical piece to label “cool,” “Dead Elvis” would be it. Composer Michael Daugherty cut his musical teeth playing keyboards in jazz, rock and funk bands, before doing some serious compositional study at Yale. You’d expect a lot of pop culture references from a guy who’s written elegies to Liberace and Jackie O and pieces about the Hell’s Angels and Route 66. And in “Dead Elvis,” Daugherty really lets it all hang out. Taking the 13th-century Latin funeral chant Dies Irae (made famous in Mozart’s “Requiem”), he mixes it up for seven instruments with double-tongued fugues, wild violin tremolo, dissonant bassoon wails over ’50s bluesy rock, and samba with wah-wah brass. Elvis is dying in style.

But the funniest part has got to be the requirement for the soloist to play in costume. Now, the bassoon isn’t exactly the Elvis of the classical world – the Clark Kent, more like. Seeing the glittery rock star wiggle hips while handling such a demure-sounding instrument is just hilarious, as Peterson agrees.

“I copped a bit from the other guys” in the ensemble, she says wryly. “But it’s fun.”

And it’s a tough play – blurrily fast passages and screaming high Es. But for Peterson, the worst bit is the costume.

“Polyester just does not cut it,” she says, wiping sweat off her face. “My sunglasses keep fogging up. I don’t know how Elvis did it.”

The Sinfonietta is pairing “Dead Elvis” with a piece written by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky about a soldier who sells his soul to the devil in return for a book that predicts the economy. For the same group of instruments, it’s in the composer’s ironic neo-Classical style, with a narrator – here Jose Gonzales, who with his screenwriter wife Lisa Halpern, has updated the text.

Don’t expect contemporary military or economic allusions, though. “The Soldier’s Tale” is strictly a morality tale, about greed and bad decisions. And with Elvis crooning from beyond the grave, it’s definitely a way to get some culture into your Halloween season.

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568

What: “Devil May Care – The Soldier’s Tale”

Who: Northwest Sinfonietta, with soloist Francine Peterson and narrator Jose Gonzales

When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 3 in Seattle, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4 in Tacoma

Where: Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., Seattle; Rialto Theater, 310 S. Ninth St., Tacoma

Tickets: $40 (Seattle), $28-$45 (Tacoma)

Information: 253-591-5894, nwsinfonietta.com