MUSIC DIRECTOR
Marin Alsop
Whether championing American composers such as Corigliano and Rouse around the world, or conducting the Brahms Requiem with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on authentic instruments, bringing fresh insights to the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich and Mahler, Alsop’s rare talent for communication, her passionate sense of discovery, and her clear, fluid technique have won her respect and admiration on both sides of the Atlantic.
Marin Alsop made history in 2005 with her appointment as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony beginning in 2007/8. In September, she will be the first woman to head a major American orchestra, which mirrors her ongoing success in the U.K. as Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO) since 2002. With Bournemouth she has made an enormous impact on audiences overseas through her appearances on UK television and BBC Radio 3, and the first of a series of recordings with the BSO on Naxos. In December of 2003 she toured to the Vienna Konzerthaus and Berlin Philharmonie with the BSO and appeared on German television. Largely as a result of her work with the BSO she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Conductor of the Year 2002, and was voted Gramophone Artist of the Year 2003. Alsop recently won the Classical Brit Award for Best Female Artist of 2005 for her recordings on Naxos with BSO of works by John Adams and Philip Glass, and also for her Naxos Barber recordings with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Meanwhile back in the United States she was named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this most prestigious American award.
Music Director of the Colorado Symphony since 1993, where her innovative programming has won several national awards, Alsop relinquished that role in 2005, but continues on as Conductor Laureate. Her reputation in North America has been secured through her high-profile guest appearances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony (Washington), Dallas, Toronto, Montreal, St. Louis, Atlanta, Houston, Cincinnati and Baltimore symphonies, and through her very successful sixteen-year Music Directorship at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.
Marin Alsop has become an annual guest of both the London Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras in their subscription seasons–a privilege afforded to few conductors. Having worked with almost all the major UK orchestras prior to her Bournemouth appointment, her guesting engagements in Europe continue to heighten her international profile including appearances with the Orchestre de Paris, the orchestras of Lyon and Toulouse, the radio symphony orchestras of Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Berlin (RSB), Helsinki Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, Orchestra de Santa Cecilia in Rome, her own Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in performance at the BBC Proms in July 2005, and her recent historic June 2006 engagement with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, one of Europe's greatest ensembles.
Other season highlights in 2006 include guest conducting with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the New York Philharmonic, and the Washington National Opera. Season highlights in 2004/05 included fall performances with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, her debuts with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and her return to the Baltimore and the Dallas Symphony Orchestras. In May 2004 Alsop conducted the New York Philharmonic in four semi-staged performances of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, starring Kristin Chenoweth, Patti Lupone, Paul Groves and Sir Thomas Allen which was broadcast live on radio and taped by PBS for broadcast during the 2004/05 season. Further afield, she has appeared with the Sydney Symphony, and made her Tokyo debut with the New Japan Philharmonic in April of 2002. She returned to Japan in 2004 for concerts with the Tokyo Philharmonic.
As Principal Guest with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra 1999-2003 she had a huge success with her Barber orchestral cycle on Naxos (six CDs). In the summer of 2002 Naxos released a recording of Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony with the Colorado Symphony, which has had excellent reviews internationally. She has made several recordings with the Colorado Symphony of works by American composers such as Rouse and Tower for Koch, and a premiere recording of Gershwin's opera Blue Monday on RCA Red Seal with the Concordia Orchestra. In 2003 she began a series of single-composer discs for Naxos with the Bournemouth Symphony (per her 2005 Classical Brit Award) starting with Adams, Glass and Bernstein, and moving on to Weill and Bartok.
Marin Alsop is a native of New York City, attended Yale University, and received her Master's Degree from the Juilliard School. In 1989 she won the coveted Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she was a pupil of Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa and Gustav Meier. The same year she was a prizewinner at the Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition in New York.
Marin Alsop's General Manager is Intermusica (contact: Susie McLeod), and her North American manager is ICM Artists (contact: Rachel Bowron).
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