Marin Alsop
Conductor Laureate
Marin Alsop recently made history with her appointment as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony beginning in 2007/8. 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 since 2002. She has also just been named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this most prestigious American award.
“Let me say it unequivocally. Marin Alsop is one of the finest conductors on the planet.” (Stephen Pettit, Evening Standard, July 2005/Bournemouth Symphony BBC Proms.)
The first artist to win Gramophone’s “Artist of the Year” award and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor’s Award in the same season, Alsop recently won the Classical Brit Award for Best Female Artist of 2005.
Ms. 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 Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic. Her 2005-06 season includes debuts with the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Gurzenich Cologne, Tonhalle Zurich and the Boston Symphony.
Alsop made her debut with the Opera Theater of St. Louis conducting John Adams’ Nixon in China and conducted a fully staged production of Bernstein’s CANDIDE with the New York Philharmonic in 2004, which was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005.
After a highly successful 12 year tenure as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony Ms. Alsop continues her association as Conductor Laureate; she also continues in her 14th season as Music Director of the highly acclaimed Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California . She has also held the position of Principal Guest Conductor of both the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the City of London Sinfonia.
Highlights of Alsop’s successful ongoing collaboration with Naxos Records include a Brahms symphonic cycle with the London Philharmonic Orchestra:
“With her debut Brahms CD, Marin Alsop offers a sumptuously lyrical rendition of the composer’s First Symphony and two overtures. Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony, lauded American music proponent and a famous Leonard Bernstein protégé, Alsop blends Romantic symphonic convention with the organic phrasing and transitions of a chamber musician… She summons a bright, singing sound from the London Philharmonic, and each gesture flows, yoga-like, into the next.” - Los Angeles Times , March 2005
She has had equal success with her ongoing series of Bournemouth Symphony recordings, which so far include Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and the symphonies of Kurt Weill; and with her collaboration with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on a complete Barber cycle.
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 , where she was a pupil of Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, and Gustav Meier.
Marin Alsop’s General Manager is Intermusica (contact: Susie McLeod), and her North American manager is ICM Artists (contact: Rachel Bowron). AUGUST 2005 - 512 words. Not to be altered without permission.
For more information, visit www.marinalsop.com.