Free Westmoreland Symphony concert will celebrate Lincoln Highway history

Take a musical journey along the Lincoln Highway during “Rhythm of the Road,” a free outdoor concert beginning at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Lincoln Highway Experience in Unity.

The nation’s first transcontinental road for automobiles, dedicated in 1913, helped spawn new business and cultural opportunities as travelers passed through towns and cities along its route.

The symphony, conducted by WSO Artistic Director Daniel Meyer, will play music linked to the early days of the history-making, coast-to-coast highway, including tunes by composers such as Scott Joplin, George Gershwin and Cole Porter, whose tunes were popular in the dance halls that dotted the highway.

“It will be a really cool thing to have the concert right along the Lincoln Highway, so the rhythm of the road will really go along with the music,” said Lauren Koker, executive director of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor, which operates the museum.

“The music of the time period is especially fun, as it transforms from ragtime to jazz,” Koker said. “I’ve played in jazz bands, and I don’t want to speak for the symphony, but it’s just so much fun to play.”

“From the teens to the early 1930s, there was a huge influx of Latin American music because of the Panama Canal,” which was completed in 1914, said WSO Executive Director Endy Reindl.

The symphony will acknowledge that with African American composer William Grant Still’s “Danzas de Panama.”

“He was a fabulous composer mainly known for his choral works,” Reindl said. “This is a fun, uptempo ode to the canal.”

Also featured will be works by early 20th-century composers Vaughan Williams and Florence Price, along with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Divertimento in D, K 136.”

Reindl said the Mozart is a nod to the classical music that was played during dinner in the swankier establishments along the road, including the famous S.S. Grand View Point Hotel, also known as the Ship Hotel or Ship of the Alleghenies, formerly located on a Bedford County ridge top.

In doing research for the concert, Reindl said he “dug out all those old library books” to learn more about the cultural influence of the highway.

“The more I started to research, the more I learned about (the highway’s) significant boost to cultural opportunities of the time,” he said. “Of 30,000 jobs added because of the highway, about half were in restaurants, hospitality, entertainment and culture.”

The concert is sponsored in part by a mini-grant awarded to the symphony, funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ Bureau of Recreation and Conservation and administered by the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor.

Limited seating is available, Koker said, but attendees are encouraged to bring their own chairs or blankets.