What Harry Smith brings to Des Moines’ Yankee Doodle Pops

Harry Smith is trading the anchor desk for the Iowa Capitol lawn and a new kind of script.

The retired CBS and NBC correspondent, who teaches a curiosity-driven liberal arts seminar at Central College in Pella, will narrate Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” and selections from the new multimedia work “American Mosaic” with the Des Moines Symphony during Yankee Doodle Pops on July 3.

The performance — which will feature a return appearance by hip-hop artist and spoken-word performer Billy Weathers and an expanded fireworks display — stitches together Smith’s life in storytelling, the symphony’s own 32‑year Fourth of July tradition and a layered look at American freedom 250 years after independence.

Symphony officials expect 100,000 to attend the free July 3 concert on the State Capitol grounds for what the organization calls the largest single-day concert in Iowa. The patriotic show will conclude with a fireworks display, nearly double what the Des Moines Symphony annually fires, over the downtown Des Moines skyline.

Smith’s ‘opportunity of a lifetime’

American composer Aaron Copland wrote “Lincoln Portrait” in 1942 for a speaker and orchestra. Spanning about 14 minutes, it combines orchestral folk-inspired music with the spoken narration of Abraham Lincoln’s words, serving as a musical monument to the 16th president.

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For Smith, the invitation to narrate Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” felt fated.

“I had a dream a number of months ago about the ‘Lincoln Portrait.’ I thought, ‘You know what, I would love to do that,'” he said. “A month or two later, I get this note: ‘We want you to do the ‘Lincoln Portrait.’’ OK. Harry Smith, psychic, weird, probably, but that indeed happened.”

By the time he sat down with Des Moines Symphony staff to walk through the July 3 program, it felt eerily familiar. “When they asked me if I would be involved, I said, ‘Are you kidding? This is like an opportunity of a lifetime.’”

Smith is clear that “Lincoln Portrait” is a chance to get out of the way. “The piece comes with specific instructions,” he said. “Don’t be an actor. Just read the words, just read the words, let the words speak for themselves.”

He said Copland’s music “sounds like America, or it sounds like the America we kind of dream about, and is the America that’s really close to our heart.”

Much of the piece, he noted, is orchestral — which is part of the appeal. Lincoln’s words come toward the end.

For Des Moines Symphony music director Joseph Giunta, Smith is a near-perfect fit for Copland’s instructions.

“In the preface of the score, Copland specifically writes in the score that the delivery is supposed to be naturally paced, and he didn’t want someone who was going to be over the top or try to sell it or anything, just primarily read it, articulate it, be meaningful and I think that this man will do that,” Giunta said.

Smith is also intrigued by sharing the bill with Weathers. “A little old school, new school. I think it’s smart to play to the audience.”

Weathers returns with a second Independence Day story

Weathers is a hip-hop artist who goes by B. Well and community organizer who owns James Beard Foundation semifinalist for Best New Bar The Contrary in the East Village. He will use spoken word to refract the Fourth of July through Black history and lived experience.

Weathers first collided with Yankee Doodle Pops almost by accident in 2022.

A commission from the Community Foundation, a piece called “Plenty of Tomorrows,” brought him to the attention of the symphony’s leadership.

After hearing Weathers speak, Richard Early, the symphony’s longtime executive director, commissioned Weathers to perform a new original work, which Weather’s named “Beauty” and the symphony calls “My, My, My.” The piece, which Weathers first performed in 2022, is set to the soundtrack of Steve Heltzeg’s “Symphony in Sculpture” piece about “Post-Balzac,” a bronze sculpture by Judith Shea that resides in the Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

For Yankee Doodle Pops, Weathers wanted to push beyond flag‑waving to tell “a narrative that I know Des Moines doesn’t hear a lot, just in regards to like a lens that they don’t see from,” he said.

“Freedom in America and celebration mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, especially minorities in this country,” he said.

The piece imagines a newly freed man confronting news of emancipation on land he has worked his whole life.

“I can only imagine what it feels like to watch Union soldiers come into a field that you’ve been working on the better half of your entire life, and they’re just like, ‘You don’t have to do this anymore,’ and that weird dynamic of ‘Well, this is all I’ve ever known, and I don’t really know what else to go do,’” he said.

A new soundtrack for 250 years of America

One of the most forward-looking pieces on the program is also the newest: “American Mosaic,” a multi-movement work, pairs sweeping orchestral music with cinematic images of life across the United States.

Composed by Peter Boyer with visuals by photographer Joe Sohm, “American Mosaic” was built specifically for the nation’s 250th anniversary. Sohm’s images — with photographs representing all 50 states — will appear on two large screens flanking the orchestra, creating a portrait of American people and landscapes.

The work is a co-commission with the National Symphony and the Kennedy Center, along with a consortium of orchestras that funded both the music and the visuals, Early said. In full, “American Mosaic” contains 11 movements. At Yankee Doodle Pops, the Des Moines Symphony will perform four of them as a preview. The complete work will open the orchestra’s Masterworks season in September.

Early calls it “the thing that is specific to the 250th,” the element of this year’s program that most directly addresses the anniversary rather than simply recycling familiar patriotic fare.

Smith will help introduce the “American Mosaic” vignette to the Yankee Doodle Pops crowd.

A full choir will also perform with the orchestra this year, contributing to “The Star Spangled Banner,” “Hymn to the Fallen” from John Williams, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” from William Steffe, “God Bless America” from Irving Berlin and “America the Beautiful” from Samuel A. Ward.

Once the first notes of the “1812 Overture” ring out, five Iowa National Guard howitzers will fire 19 canon blasts in sync with the music as fireworks light up the Des Moines skyline. This year, the Des Moines Symphony doubled its fireworks display, with the added cost covered by the organization and its sponsors.

‘More that unites us’

Yankee Doodle Pops is a civic ritual. Thousands of Iowans spread across the hill below the Capitol, listening together as fireworks and howitzers punctuate the night.

Smith pondered whether some of his Central College students would be in the crowd. After he announced his retirement from NBC News in 2024, he decided to return to his alma mater, Central College. He graduated from Central College in 1973, studying communications and theater, a pairing that would become the backbone of his broadcast style: part journalist, part performer, wholly curious.

At Central College, the executive-in-residence teaches a seminar titled “Commencement: The Beginning,” a discussion-based course that focuses on fostering curiosity, exploring various perspectives and empowering students to write meaningful stories.

Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor and dining reporter at The Des Moines Register. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or drop her a line at [email protected].

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