Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in the international music scene, a Music Director of vision and distinction who passionately believes that "music has the power to change lives". She is recognised across the world for her innovative approach to programming and for her deep commitment to education and to the development of audiences of all ages. The 2023/24 season marks Alsop’s fifth as Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which she leads at Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, and on recordings, broadcasts and tours.
2023/24 is also her first season as Artistic Director & Chief Conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony.She also takes up the position as Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, with whom she has enjoyed dynamic and fruitful relationship. As Chief Conductor and Curator of Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, she conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s summer residency, reflecting her long relationship with Ravinia and the orchestra.
Marin Alsop is in high demand as a guest conductor, and will return to conduct the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms in September 2023 for the third time. She regularly appears with such major international orchestras as the Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Danish National, Budapest Festival and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras. In 2023/24 she returns to DSO Berlin, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as well as making her debut appearance at the Metropolitan Opera with Adam’s El Niño and Theater an der Wien with Bernstein’s Candide.
Joanna Piestrzyńska
Marin Alsop conducting the Vienna RSO in April 2014
Joanna Piestrzyńska
Marin Alsop conducting the Vienna RSO in April 2014
Since 2021 Alsop has been Music Director Laureate and OrchKids Founder at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. This concluded her outstanding 14-year tenure as Music Director, in which she led the orchestra on its first European tour in 13 years, on multiple award-winning recordings and in more than two dozen world premieres, alongside founding OrchKids, its music education program for thousands of the city’s most disadvantaged young people. In 2019, after seven years as Music Director, Alsop became Conductor of Honour of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, where she continues conducting major projects each season.
Recognized with multiple Gramophone Awards, Alsop’s extensive discography includes recordings for Decca, Harmonia Mundi and Sony Classical, and acclaimed Naxos cycles of Brahms with the London Philharmonic, Dvořák with the Baltimore Symphony, and Prokofiev with the São Paulo Symphony. Committed to new music, she was Music Director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music for 25 years. The first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, Alsop has also been honoured with the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award and made history as the first female conductor of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms.
The film ‘The Conductor’ (Tribeca Film Festival 2021) maps Alsop’s life and career through intimate interviews, shared moments in her professional and private life, unseen archival footage with her mentor Leonard Bernstein, and of Alsop teaching the next generation of conductors. Amongst many awards and academic positions, she served as 2020 Artist-in-Residence at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, is Director of Graduate Conducting at the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute and holds Honorary Doctorates from Yale University and the Juilliard School. To promote and nurture the careers of her fellow female conductors, in 2002 she founded the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship, which has spawned a number of the outstanding young women conductors of today.
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