{ Impromptu
L aura Farmer
Rheda Becker
BSO Narrator
For generations, she’s been the voice
of the orchestra.
As 40 bright-yellow school buses lined the street outside the Meyerhoff, hundreds of chattering, wide-eyed
children began to pour into the concert hall. As the lights
dimmed, the din of little voices coming from the more
than 2,000 elementary school students gave way to an
expectant silence and a warm, friendly voice was heard
over the loudspeakers: “Good morning and welcome to
the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. I'm Rheda Becker
and it is my pleasure to be your narrator this morning.”
It’s a line that Becker has had a little while to perfect—
this season, the BSO’s beloved narrator celebrates her
40th anniversary.
“I’ve seen and done so many interesting things with the
BSO throughout these past 40 years,” says Becker.
This list of “interesting things” includes touring with
the orchestra to what was then East Germany and
preparing regular trip updates for NPR’s All Things
Considered, serving on the Education Committee,
supporting the OrchKids program, and narrating
more than 1,500 concerts, including everything from
major classical works and the Oregon Ridge outdoor
programs to the youth concerts for which today’s
audiences know her best.
In fact, it was Prokofiev’s sprightly Peter and the Wolf, a
perennial youth-concert favorite, that initially piqued
Becker’s interest in narration. “As a young child, I got a
recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and Wolf and fell in love
with it. I always dreamt of being the person who narrated
this work.” And she worked hard to realize that dream.
“I decided to go to Peabody to study narration. You
see, nobody studied that at the time; narrators were
merely actors or radio or television personalities. So I
crafted my own program.”
The dream came true in 1974 when former BSO
Music Director Sergiu Comissiona was made aware
of her work and in 1974 invited Becker to narrate
Prokofiev’s vivid Peter and the Wolf.
44 O v ertur e |
www. bsomusic .org
Mitro H o o d
In addition to being the BSO’s narrator, Becker
was one of the early supporters of the BSO’s
OrchKids program. Shown with Becker are
Alexia Redd on bass, Aaron Palmer on saxophone,
Keyona Carrington on clarinet, Lowrider James
on tuba, and Marvin Jones-Tobin on violin.
And eventually, she