Marin Alsop
Internationally acclaimed for her creative approach to programming and interpretation of repertoire from the mainstream to the contemporary, Marin Alsop is an inspirational music director, instilling orchestras with new dynamism and deepening their interaction with audiences and the wider community.
In June 2009 Marin Alsop’s success as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was recognised when it was announced that the relationship is now extended to 2015. Alsop retains strong links with all of her previous orchestras. From 2002-2008 she was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and now holds the post of Conductor Emeritus, as well as being Music Director Laureate of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, where she was Music Director from 1993 to 2005. Since 1992 Alsop has been Music Director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, building a devoted audience for new music and playing to sold-out houses.
As a guest conductor, Marin Alsop makes regular appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. European engagements have taken her to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Orchestre de Paris, Munich Philharmonic and La Scala Milan and she is one of the few conductors to perform every season with both the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. At London’s Southbank Centre, she is the Artistic Director of ‘The Bernstein Project’ which runs from September 2009 to July 2010, and which will range from Mozart with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to Bernstein’s own Mass, featuring musicians from the National Youth Orchestra and a huge cast of performers drawn from the local community.
Since beginning her position in Baltimore in September 2007, Alsop has spearheaded educational initiatives which reach more than 60,000 school and pre-school students, and in 2008 launched ‘OrchKids’, an after-school programme designed to provide music education, instruments and mentorship to the city’s neediest young people. Her ability to transcend traditional barriers was exemplified by her invitation to attend the 2006 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos and by her delivery of a televised speech on the importance of arts education to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. in 2008. A regular presence in the media, she has been profiled in Time and Newsweek, appeared on NBC’s Today Show, and was featured as ABC News’s ‘Person of the Week.’
Musical America’s 2009 Conductor of the Year, Marin Alsop made history in 2007 when she was appointed music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, thus becoming the first woman to head a major American orchestra. In 2003 she was the first artist to be named Gramophone’s Artist of the Year and to receive the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor’s Award in the same year, while in 2005 she became the first conductor to be conferred the USA’s prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Among her other prizes are a European Women of Achievement Award, a Classical BRIT Award for Best Female Artist, and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s BBC Radio 3 Listeners Award. In autumn 2008 she became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and her achievements at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music have been recognised annually with the ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music.
Her extensive discography includes the Brahms symphonies with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, music by Bartók, Bernstein, Takemitsu, Weill and Orff with the Bournemouth Symphony, in addition to a series featuring American composers. A mainstay of the Naxos recording label, in 2008 Alsop launched a Dvorák symphony cycle with the Baltimore Symphony with the Symphony No.9, ‘From the New World’, which immediately became an international best seller.
Born in New York City, Marin Alsop attended Yale University and received her Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School. Marin Alsop was the first woman to be awarded the Koussevitsky Conducting Prize from the Tanglewood Music Center where she became a protégé of Leonard Bernstein.
Photograph courtesy of Grant Leighton
