The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will kick off its new season on Saturday night with a performance and gala party at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. They’ve already had a busy week. Last Saturday, they performed for a national television audience at Pier Six as part of the 200th anniversary celebration of the Star Spangled Banner. This weekend, the Symphony will again keep the national anthem front and center. They’ll perform a piece that hasn’t seen the light of day for 80 years: an "Ode to the Star Spangled Banner" by FerdeGrofé, a classical composer and jazz arranger who is well known in classical circles for the piece "The Grand Canyon Suite."
Tom Hall speaks with Neil Grauer and Nicholas Brown. Neil is an author who has written several books, the most recent being a history of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Nick Brown is on the staff of the Library of Congress. They’re here to tell us the story of how Grofé’s Ode came to find its way on to the BSO program on Saturday.
