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News & Reviews —Playbill Arts “Marin Alsop, the first woman to lead a major American symphony and the artistic director of the Santa Cruz-based Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, was among the 25 innovators chosen for this year’s MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” $500,000 that recipients can use however they wish.” —The San Jose Mercury News “When the news leaked out that Marin Alsop was to be appointed the next music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the national media leapt on the story as a barrier-breaking milestone. Ms. Alsop would be the first woman to direct a major American orchestra. She had already made history in 2002 as the first woman to become principal conductor of a major British orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony. —The New York Times “The recent announcement that Marin Alsop will become music director of the Baltimore Symphony at the end of the 2005-2006 season is an exciting step for all who have followed her extraordinary career with great admiration, and for all who care about the well-being of the symphony orchestra in America.” —The Wall Street Journal “Marin Alsop breaks new ground in a world of male maestros… the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) announced last week that it had chosen Alsop to be the orchestra’s new conductor... Alsop was seen as new blood and a new direction: she’s only 48, young for a conductor at this level. She’s funny and approachable—she has a habit of chatting informally to audiences from the podium—and she has been known to moonlight (on the violin) with a swing band. She can handle the warhorses of the repertoire—she just recorded Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 with the London Philharmonic—but she also champions living American composers like Philip Glass. She can even be heard, on occasion, to utter the phrase way cool. ‘There’s this whole archetypal image of what a conductor is, this inaccessible person with an accent and an ascot,’ Alsop says. ‘This is the age of collaboration rather than autocracy.’” —Time magazine “As expected, conductor Marin Alsop’s amazing orchestra dominated the 43rd Cabrillo festival of Contemporary Music. As Expected? In fact, they have spoiled us into taking for granted what no other band in the land could reasonably deliver: brilliant performances of music they have never played—or even heard—before rehearsals began.” —Metro Santa Cruz “’Cabrillo has created an audience for totally unknown music and is setting a great precedent for other festivals,’ says David Harrington, the violinist and artistic director of San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet.” -Metro Santa Cruz “If there’s a more improbable enterprise on today’s treacherous musical landscape than a festival devoted to contemporary music, it could only be a festival devoted to contemporary orchestral music…Yet every summer, hundred of listeners, performers, and composers find their way to the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California, for two week’s worth of recent and slightly less recent orchestral music…audiences come to hear music Director Marin Alsop lead performances of works by living masters like John Adams, Christopher Rouse, James MacMillan, Thomas Adès, and Aaron Jay Kernis. —Symphony Magazine “Alsop has used her taut, expressive conducting style and the skills of a first-rate pickup orchestra to argue forcefully for the place of orchestral music on the postmodern landscape.” ––San Francisco Chronicle "These composers have Alsop to thank for bringing their music to life and to audiences. Their names may ultimately outlive hers, but in the moment, she's the sun and they're the planets, and the rest of us can fasten our seat belts for this 'screaming' ride around a solar system called Cabrillo." —Metro Santa Cruz "Big shifts are happening in the symphonic world, and Cabrillo is an important carrier of that message." —San Jose Mercury News "The American Symphony Orchestra League…would do well to fund a thorough case study of the Cabrillo phenomenon as a model for all the symphonies out there who are struggling to survive, looking desperately for formulae to stimulate and draw audiences. Clearly, Cabrillo has achieved something that others do not remotely grasp." —Arts San Francisco “The Cabrillo Festival’s most recent program radiates the new rainbow of color and timbre of the American 21st century orchestra.” —Metro Santa Cruz "…it was powerful stuff, and it was conducted with characteristic focus and flair by music director Marin Alsop. If the two composers seemed an odd couple—Adès so flashy and so British, Adams deeply American and increasingly writing with the wisdom of middle age—the net effect was invigorating, to say the least." —San Francisco Chronicle "Over 11 seasons [with the Cabrillo Festival], Music Director Marin Alsop has treated her composers like fine wines. She chooses them for their aging potential, serves them to us regularly so we can sample how their complexity is developing, and produces award-winning product year after year." —San Francisco Classical Voice "For lovers of contemporary music, Santa Cruz, California is the place to be during the first two weeks of August." —BBC Music Magazine "For more than 40 years, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music has been a notable West Coast outpost for new classical music. But the festival, which has had a series of distinguished music directors, has evolved…. " —New York Times review |
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