The Work of Marin Alsop
The conductor Marin Alsop is highly regarded. She has led several of the most prestigious orchestras in Europe as well as the majority of the top orchestras in the United States.
On October 16, 1956, Alsop was born in New York. He attended Yale University for his undergraduate studies in music and the Juilliard School for his graduate work.
Alsop, a well-known musician in the UK, has performed with many of the country’s top orchestras. From 2002 to 2008, she was as Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony; she is currently Conductor Emeritus. She was appointed principal guest conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the City of London Sinfonia in 1999. She has also performed with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, BBC SO, LSO, and LPO.
Alsop has promoted contemporary American music, releasing renowned recordings of pieces by Barber and Gershwin, among other composers. She established Concordia, a 50-piece orchestra with a focus on contemporary music, in 1984. She often leads Concordia at New York City’s Lincoln Center. She performs violin jazz with her band, String Fever.
Numerous awards have been given to Alsop, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellowship, the European Women of Achievement Award, and the Classical Brit Award for Best Female Artist.
She set a new milestone in 2003 when she became the first person to simultaneously take home the Royal Philharmonic Society Conductor’s Award and the Artist of the Year Award from Gramophone.
As the sole classical musician present at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland in 2006 alongside presidents, prime ministers, and CEOs of the most influential corporations in the world, Alsop accepted an invitation. She has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, been featured as Person of the Week on ABC News, and been highlighted in Time and Newsweek.
When Alsop was chosen as the first female music director of a significant American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, in 2007, she created history.
After winning her first position with an orchestra as associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony in Virginia, Alsop started conducting studies with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa, the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in 1988. She was appointed music director of the Long Island Philharmonic in New York and the Eugene Symphony in Oregon the following year. She took on the role of music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California, in 1991, and the Colorado Symphony in Denver, Colorado, in 1993. She held a number of positions with other orchestras as well. In 2002, she was appointed chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony in England, where she gained notoriety. She became the first woman to conduct a major American orchestra when she was appointed music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra beginning with the 2007–2008 season.
American and current music were of particular importance to Alsop. In 2004, she led the New York Philharmonic in a semi-staged production of Bernstein’s Candide as well as a revival of John Adams’ Nixon in China with the Opera Theater of St. Louis, Missouri. Among other American composers, she captured the orchestral compositions of Edward Joseph Collins and Samuel Barber. Alsop received appreciation for her renditions of classic repertoire, notably Romantic works, as well as for her recordings of Brahms’s compositions with the London Philharmonic. The Red Violin Concerto by John Corigliano was released in 2007 by Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony with Joshua Bell performing as the soloist.
With the So Paulo Symphony Orchestra, with whom she recorded Sergey Prokofiev’s seven symphonies, Alsop was chosen principal conductor in 2012. She took over as the main conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra after leaving that position in 2019. The first female to hold both posts was Alsop. The COVID-19 epidemic delayed the start of Alsop’s term until 2021, but she was chosen chief conductor and curator of the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the following year.
Numerous awards were given to Alsop, including the Stokowski Conducting Prize in 1988 and a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts, where she earned the Koussevitsky Conducting Prize the following year. She was selected Artist of the Year by Gramophone magazine in 2003, the same year she took home the Conductor Award from the Royal Philharmonic Society. 2005 saw Alsop receive the Classical BRIT (British Record Industry Trust) Female Artist of the Year Award and become the first conductor to be selected a MacArthur fellow. She was the focus of the documentary The Conductor, which had its world premiere in 2021 in New York at the Tribecca Film Festival.
Additionally, to being the first and only conductor to get a MacArthur Fellowship, Alsop was the first female conductor of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms and received the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. She holds honorary doctorates from Yale University and the Juilliard School, in addition to numerous other accolades and academic positions, including 2020 Artist-in-Residence at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, Director of Graduate Conducting at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute, and Artist-in-Residence at 2020.
She established the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship in 2002 to support and advance the careers of other female conductors. In 2020, the fellowship was renamed the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in her honor. A documentary on her life called The Conductor made its debut at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
The Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, La Scala Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra are just a few of the notable international ensembles that Alsop frequently guest conducts. He also has long-standing relationships with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestras.
She led the “Global Ode to Joy” (GOTJ), a crowdsourced video production to honour Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, in conjunction with YouTube and Google Arts & Culture. She urged the entire audience to express the Ninth Symphony’s call for tolerance, unity, and joy in videos branded #GlobalOdeToJoy in collaboration with Germany’s official Beethoven anniversary campaign and the top cultural organisations of five continents. A grand video finale featuring a GOTJ highlight reel set to a performance of the “Ode to Joy,” featuring the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, the international Stay-at-Home Choir, and Alsop herself, marked the project’s conclusion in December 2020, the month of Beethoven’s birth.
