In September 2007, Marin Alsop made history with her appointment as the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the first woman to head a major American orchestra. This mirrored her ongoing success in the United Kingdom where she was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony from 2002-08 and is now Conductor Emeritus.
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. In the Autumn of 2008 she will be inducted as a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Ms. Alsop has conducted most of the leading US orchestras including Chicago and Boston, also the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Pittsburgh Symphony, all of whom have reinvited her in 2008. She is 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 European orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony and in 2008/9, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Munich State Opera and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. In April 2008, she made her debut with the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala in Milan – the first woman conductor in the orchestra’s 230 year history.
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, which she also conducted for Opera Colarado in June 2008 and recorded for Naxos Records. 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. In Autumn 2008 she will conduct Bernstein’s Mass as a centrepiece in Carnegie Hall’s Leonard Bernstein festival. She will also lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in this work in Baltimore and at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Ms. Alsop continues her association as Conductor Laureate of the Colorado Symphony following her highly successful 12-year tenure as Music Director. She also continues as Music Director of California's acclaimed Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which she has headed since 1992. In addition, Ms. 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.
One of Alsop's first projects as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony is a Dvorak cycle for Naxos. The Baltimore Sun described her recent release of Dvorak’s 9th Symphony as “unfurling with plenty of fire and lyrical power. All in all, a solid, engaging performance.” Other highlights of Alsop's 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. 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's "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.
Marin Alsop’s General Manager is Intermusica (contact: Susie McLeod), and her North American manager is Opus 3 Artists (David Foster).
August 2008 / 716 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
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