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Rheda Becker
//December 12, 2022
Rheda Becker
Founding Donor
OrchKids, Baltimore Symphony Orchestr
– Rheda Becker
Rheda Becker’s voice is well known to patrons of the BSO as narrator and host of more than 1,500 education concerts and programs at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.
She is recognized as one of the outstanding professionals in the art of the musical narration and has performed with symphony orchestras throughout the U.S.
Becker had a larger role behind the scenes as art patron, photography collector, BSO lifetime director and founding donor for OrchKids, a year-round music program that works with schools in Baltimore, serving more than 1,900 children.
As philanthropists, Becker and her partner Robert E. Meyerhoff have donated millions to OrchKids.
The group is the brainchild of Maestra Marin Alsop, who is now the BSO’s music director laureate and Orchkids founder.
She moved on from her role as music director at BSO to be chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.
“It is thrilling to watch our Orchkids flourish in this transformational program. I love to see them become empowered to actualize their dreams,” Becker said in 2017.
OrchKids is designed to create social change and nurture promising futures for young people in Baltimore neighborhoods. It also brings students from those neighborhoods to the symphony hall and professional sports stadiums of Baltimore, so they are included in the city’s important institutions.
Becker herself loved music as a child, playing narrated recording of Sergei Prokofiev’s symphonic fairy tale Peter and the Wolf repeatedly. She became a speech therapist, and in her 40s decided to pursue her dream of being a musical narrator.
