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“There’s no denying the wit and vitality that Alsop—a lively entertainer as well as a powerhouse musician—brings to her performances.” —San Francisco Chronicle
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 recently made history with
her appointment as the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. With the 2007-08
season she became the first woman to head a major American orchestra, mirroring her ongoing success
in the United Kingdom as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony since 2002. She made her
Carnegie Hall conducting debut this season with her new orchestra.
The first to win Gramophone's "Artist of the Year" award and the Royal Philharmonic Society's
Conductor's Award in the same season, Alsop won the Classical Brit Award for Best Female Artist of
2005. Also in 2005, Marin Alsop was named a MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive
this most prestigious American award. In 2006, she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's BBC
Radio 3 Listeners Award. Radio 3 listeners/voters called her "a breath of fresh air in the music
world," "a fantastic charismatic conductor" and praised her "boundless enthusiasm." In 2007 she
received the European Women of Achievement Award.
Alsop is a regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago
Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is also one of the few conductors to appear every season with
both the London Symphony and the London Philharmonic orchestras and has appeared as a guest conductor
with many other distinguished orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Zurich
Tonhalle, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Boston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Tokyo
Philharmonic.
In September 2006 Alsop led the American premiere of Nicholas Maw's opera, Sophie's Choice, at
the Washington National Opera. She made her debut with the Opera Theater of St. Louis conducting
John Adams's Nixon in China and in 2004 she conducted a fully staged production of Bernstein's
Candide with the New York Philharmonic, which was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005.
Alsop continues as Music Director of California's acclaimed Cabrillo
Festival of Contemporary Music, which she has headed since 1992. She also continues her association as Conductor Laureate of the Colorado Symphony following her
highly successful 12-year tenure as Music Director. In addition,
Alsop has held the position of Principal Guest Conductor with both the City of London Sinfonia
and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with whom she made numerous critically acclaimed
recordings.
Among the highlights of Alsop's acclaimed recording collaboration with Naxos are a Brahms
symphony cycle with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and an ongoing series of recordings with the
Bournemouth Symphony, which includes Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms,
and the symphonies of Kurt Weill. One of Alsop's first projects as Music Director of the Baltimore
Symphony will be a Dvorak series, also for Naxos. On the recent release of her performance of
Brahms' Third Symphony with the LPO, the Baltimore Sun said, "Alsop seems to have moved into a
higher gear. The result is glowing music-making, rich in character and atmosphere." In addition to
her orchestral recordings, Alsop can also be heard regularly as a commentator on NPR's Weekend
Edition program "Marin on Music", BBC's Radio 3, and XM Satellite Radio.
In 2006, Alsop was the only classical musician invited to attend the annual meeting of the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, alongside presidents, prime ministers and CEOs of the world's
most powerful companies. She has been profiled in Time and Newsweek, appeared on NBC's Today Show,
and was featured as ABC News' "Person of the Week". Marin Alsop is a native of New York City; she
attended Yale University and received her Master's Degree from The Juilliard School. In 1989, her
conducting career was launched when she was a prizewinner at the Leopold Stokowski International
Conducting Competition in New York, and in the same year was awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting
Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center.
Photo by: r.r. jones
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