In what is the strangest year any of us can remember, one musical tribute to the incoming president and vice president will also be unusual.

In an effort to promote some badly needed “hope and harmony,” conductor Marin Alsop and Classical Movements, a concert tour company for classical orchestras and choirs, have come together to honor the inauguration next week of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They will present a livestream performance by the Hope & Harmony Ensemble comprised of 14 musicians from 14 American orchestras. Principal hornist Elizabeth Freimuth will represent the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

The livestream over social media and orchestra websites will be at noon EST on Jan. 19 — the day before the inauguration. The music will feature Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man (which Copland wrote for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as a wartime fanfare) and Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, composed by American composer Joan Tower, the first woman to win the Grawemeyer Award in music. Tower’s Fanfare is often viewed as a response to Copland.

The works to be conducted by Alsop will honor Joe Biden with Copland’s Fanfare. Tower’s Fanfare honors Kamala Harris as the nation’s first female vice-president.

There is unifying symbolism in the coming together of 14 musicians from across the nation, from sea to shining sea.

The players represent the Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, Peabody Institute, South Asian Symphony, St. Louis Symphony and Utah Symphony.

In what the organizers say will be an “unprecedented show of unity within the orchestra industry,” as well, the virtual “Fanfare for Joe and Kamala” will be streamed on social media, and also livestreamed simultaneously on Classical Movements’ website, by all 14 orchestras and other partners. They predict a combined digital footprint of more than 7.6 million and growing.

In addition to footage of each musician recorded in their homes and on site across the country, the
presentation incorporates photographs and video illustrating “America the Beautiful” and the
context of the struggle for civil rights and equality for women in the United States.

Marin Alsop was the first woman conductor of a major American orchestra. She is currently the Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (to step down in August 2021), and chief conductor of the Vienna (Austria) Radio Symphony. Besides other positions, she is Chief Conductor and Curator of Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, where she she curates and conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s summer residencies. She was a protégé of Leonard Bernstein.