September, 2005 – Marin Alsop (1956 – ) is appointed the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She is the first woman appointed to lead a major American orchestra.
Born in New York City to two professional violinists, Marin Alsop studies violin from an early age but attends Yale University in pursuit of a degree in mathematics. She transfers to the Juilliard School in the mid 1970s and receives Bachelor and Master’s Degrees in Violin.
Turned down three times by the Juilliard Conducting Program, Alsop founds two string ensembles and Concordia, a 50 piece orchestra, in 1984. She is the outstanding student conductor and the first female to win the Koussevitsky Prize at the Tanglewood Festival in1989. There she meets and is mentored by her hero Leonard Bernstein.
Between 1992 and 2005, Alsop conducts and is music director with several orchestras, most notably the Colorado Symphony. In 2005, she is the first conductor to be awarded A MacArthur Fellowship.
Alsop becomes the Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony in 2005. She is so successful that her contact is extended twice to 2021 and she continues to appear with the orchestra each year. Starting in 2015, she is the Director of Graduate Conducting at the Peabody Institute. During her tenure, Alsop has founded OrchKids, a popular program for underprivileged Baltimore youth.
Marin Alsop is famous for speaking to her audiences and conducting prize winning recordings of new works and classics with Baltimore and other international orchestras. Her career has blossomed as principal conductor and music director with many orchestras in South America and throughout Europe.
Alsop still lives in Baltimore but regularly travels internationally as one of classical music’s most popular conductors. Among many positions, she is presently the first female artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
