When the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1916, it was unique among major American orchestras in one specific way: it was a branch of municipal government, paid for and overseen by the City of Baltimore itself. Every other big-city orchestra in the United States was a private institution from the start. The BSO went private in 1942 but kept the close relationships with state and local government that the original arrangement had built. The orchestra performs more than 130 concerts a year at its principal residence, the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, and another 35 at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda - making it, since 2005, the country's first orchestra with year-round venues in two metropolitan areas.
The modern BSO dates from 1965, when Baltimore real estate developer and arts patron Joseph Meyerhoff became president of the orchestra. He held the position for eighteen years. Meyerhoff hired the Romanian conductor Sergiu Comissiona as music director in 1969. Under Comissiona's fifteen-year tenure, the orchestra's national reputation grew substantially. Meyerhoff's own philanthropy paid for the 2,443-seat concert hall that opened on September 16, 1982, on Cathedral Street downtown. The Meyerhoff Symphony Hall was designed by Pietro Belluschi with acoustical design by Bolt, Beranek and Newman, the firm whose series of convex curves and absence of parallel walls gave the hall its famously clear sound. The shoebox-shaped hall is considered one of the better-sounding American concert venues of its generation. Meyerhoff died in 1985 having funded an entire institutional identity in his lifetime.
David Zinman took over from Comissiona in 1985 and held the music directorship for thirteen years. Zinman's BSO became one of the most-recorded American orchestras of its time, with major recordings on Telarc, Argo/London, and Sony Classical. The orchestra won Grammy Awards in 1990 and 1995 with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Zinman led the orchestra on its first European tour in 1987, including stops in the Soviet Union - the first American orchestra in eleven years to perform there after cultural relations resumed near the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Subsequent tours took the orchestra to East Asia in 1994, 1997, and 2002. The BSO's commissioning record from this period helped establish a generation of American composers: Christopher Rouse's First Symphony, John Harbison's Third, Stephen Albert's Cello Concerto, all premiered in Meyerhoff Hall.
When the BSO announced Marin Alsop as its next music director in 2005, she became the first woman ever appointed to lead a major American orchestra. The decision was controversial within the orchestra - some musicians felt they had been excluded from the search process, and the dispute briefly threatened to derail the appointment. Alsop and the orchestra met after the announcement, smoothed over differences, and she took over in September 2007. Her contract was extended in 2009 and again in 2013. Alsop championed contemporary American music, commissioned Philip Glass's Overture for 2012 and John Adams's Saxophone Concerto, and launched OrchKids in May 2008 - an after-school program providing music education, instruments, meals, and mentorship at no cost to children in low-income Baltimore neighborhoods. OrchKids was funded by an initial $100,000 from Alsop herself and a $1 million gift from Rheda Becker and Robert Meyerhoff, and now serves more than 400 students. Alsop concluded her music directorship at the end of the 2020-2021 season.
The orchestra has been under chronic financial pressure for years. In summer 2019, management locked out the musicians during a contract dispute over whether the BSO would remain a 52-weeks-per-year ensemble - the structure that defines the country's top orchestras. The lockout ended after several weeks. The September 2020 agreement that followed affirmed the 52-week status but with pay reductions partially driven by COVID-19 losses. Peter Kjome stepped down as president and CEO in early 2022. Mark C. Hanson took over in April 2022. James Conlon was appointed artistic advisor in November 2020, an unusual position for a conductor who had not previously worked with the orchestra. The BSO survived the pandemic with reduced budgets, contracted seasons, and a steady commitment to the OrchKids program, which kept running for the children it served even when the concert calendar shrank.
Jonathon Heyward, an American conductor born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1992, first guest-conducted the BSO in March 2022. He returned the following month for a charity concert benefiting Ukraine. In July 2022, the orchestra announced his appointment as the next music director, beginning with the 2023-2024 season. Heyward is the first conductor of color to lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in its 109-year history. His initial five-year contract was extended in October 2025 through the 2030-2031 season. The choice signals continuity with what Alsop began - both her interest in expanding the orchestra's audience demographics and her commitment to American contemporary repertoire. Heyward inherits an institution that is smaller and more financially constrained than the one Comissiona led in the 1970s, but one that has built two genuine residencies in two metropolitan areas and an education program that touches hundreds of Baltimore children every year. The orchestra's job, as ever, is to keep making music that matters in a city where the question of what classical music is for has never had an easy answer.
The Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the principal residence of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, is located at approximately 39.3039 N, 76.6190 W on Cathedral Street in midtown Baltimore. The hall sits well outside the Washington Flight Restricted Zone and Special Flight Rules Area. BWI Marshall (KBWI) is 10 miles southwest. Martin State Airport (KMTN) is 6 miles east. The orchestra's second residence at the Music Center at Strathmore is in North Bethesda, Maryland, at approximately 39.025 N, 77.099 W - much closer to Reagan National (KDCA) and well within the Special Flight Rules Area. From altitude, the Meyerhoff Hall is identifiable as a low circular building distinct from the surrounding rectilinear urban grid.