When the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra warms up a week from tomorrow, the musicians will be clad in their usual summer attire: White dinner jackets and bow ties for the men, white tops and black skirts or slacks for the women.

Tie-dye might be more appropriate.

On the day Jerry Garcia would have turned 66, the venerable orchestra will welcome more than 2,000 Deadheads to the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall for the world premiere of Dead Symphony No. 6, the first orchestral work inspired by the music of the Grateful Dead.

Patrons will be greeted by a display of rare Dead photos in the lobby, and the approximately 50-minute performance will include a psychedelic light display.

The idea for the unusual show is from Toby Blumenthal, the BSO's manager of facility sales and a certified Deadhead, who came across a copy of the Dead Symphony CD and thought it would be a perfect fit for the adventurous orchestra.

"The BSO, in my opinion, can rock," Blumenthal said.

The orchestra has performed with Elvis Costello, Alison Krauss, Ben Folds and the Decemberists. The night after Dead Symphony, it will play the music of Led Zeppelin.

But Dead Symphony is more than just pop songs arranged for an orchestra -- it's an honest-to-goodness, 12-movement symphony by a respected classical composer that twists Dead songs in adventurous directions.

The symphony had a gestation period that inevitably recalls that most quoted of Dead lyrics, "What a long, strange trip it's been." Atlanta recording studio owner Mike Adams first got the idea after a Dead show in 1974. He began pursuing it in earnest after Garcia died in 1995 and contacted composer Lee Johnson, who's also from the Atlanta area.

Johnson wasn't a Deadhead before he took on the project. He likes to immerse himself in a subject before he starts writing, so he amassed a huge collection of Dead CDs that he carried around in a paper grocery bag. He spent nearly 10 years composing his sixth symphony.

The Russian National Orchestra recorded the symphony in 2005, and a CD was released in 2007. But Aug. 1 will be the first time it has been performed live.