Crowd Joins in Singing National Anthem at Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Peace Concert

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra held a free concert outside the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore on Wednesday, April 29, a little over a week after the death of 27-year-old Freddie Gray, a local man who died from fatal injuries suffered while in police custody.

The #BSOPeace concert is part of a push to bring the community together after days of unrest in Baltimore that have been punctuated by protests and riots. The hall, on the 1200 block of Cathedral Street, is located just two and a half miles from Mondawmin Mall, which was hit by violence and looting on Monday.

In a post about the event on their Facebook page, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra quoted Leonard Bernstein, who was music director of the New York Philharmonic during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, saying, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Credit: Instagram/Amanda Klein