The National Symphony Orchestra: NPR's House Band For A Day

It's become an annual tradition for NPR to host a live band in our studios for a full day. This year, we upped the ante and invited around 70 musicians from Washington, D.C.'s National Symphony Orchestra to play the musical interludes between stories on All Things Considered.

Steven Reineke, the NSO's principal pops conductor, says the experience was both gratifying and surprising. "The whole experience has just been so much fun, from the first time I heard about this, but it really didn't take full shape until today," Reineke says. "We had a bunch of music selected, but we didn't know exactly what we were going to play or where we were going to play it ... I'm starting to feel like what Toscanini must have felt like with the NBC Orchestra."

Hear NPR's Audie Cornish speak with Reineke and NSO trombonist David Murray at the audio link.

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