Oh say can you hear the sounds of the American experience?

The University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra will present “From the New World,” songs inspired by America, at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Margaret Martin Performing Arts Center.

The concert will include Antonin Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” and “Cello Concert,” as well as a performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“It is going to be a beautiful classical concert,” said Jay Dean, director of music and the principal conductor for the USM Symphony Orchestra. “The pieces that we are playing were either written in America or were inspired by American-type folk songs.”

Dvorak was a 19th-century Czech composer who often used folk music as an inspiration for his symphonic compositions.

Dvorak composed the “New World Symphony” — his ninth — when he was the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America. The symphony was particularly influenced by the melodies Dvorak heard from black and American Indian folk sources.

Dvorak said he believed the future music of America would be founded on what he called “Negro melodies.”

“These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States,” Dvorak said in 1892. “These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.”

Those folk songs — and the American landscape — combined to inspire the symphony.

“In this case, he used tunes similar to those he heard in America, and one of his most famous tunes we now have in some hymnals as the music for the hymn ‘Goin’ Home,’” Dean said.

Joining Dean in front of the 80-member orchestra will be Assistant Conductor Ivan del Prado, who will preside over the cello performance.

Alexander Russakovsky will be the solo cellist for the “Cello Concerto.” Russakovsky lives in Picayune and is on the faculty at USM.

Russakovsky is a founding member of the Jerusalem Academy String Quartet, and has performed in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France, Israel, Russia and the United States.

“He is a first-rate cellist who studied at the Moscow Conservatory and is probably one of the best cellists in the U.S.,” Dean said. “He is a spectacular performer.”

The inclusion of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the program coincides with the bicentennial of the song’s publication, Dean said.

The author of the anthem, Francis Scott Key had watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812 from a nearby ship, and the sight of the continually flying American flag inspired the lyrics for the song. It was first printed Sept. 20, 1814, in a Baltimore newspaper.

The tune Key used, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” was already popular in the United States at the time.

Doors for the concert will open at 6:30 p.m., and The Grape Escape Club Room will have a cash-only bar at that time.

Tickets to the event may be purchased at the door or in advance from Natchez Pilgrimage Tours at natchezpilgrimage.com or by phone at 800-647-6742.

Admission is $20. Student and military ID tickets are $10.

The performance is a Natchez Festival of Music presentation.