Marin Alsop

Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult for Marin Alsop, the world’s most celebrated female conductor.

Alsop was raised in New York City to professional musician parents. She attended Yale University, but later transferred to the Juilliard School, where she earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in violin. She founded the string ensemble String Fever in 1981. She won the Koussevitzky Prize as outstanding student conductor at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1989.

Since 1992, she has been the musical director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California. The festival specializes in contemporary orchestral music.

In 1993 to 2005, she was the first principal conductor and then music director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Today, she is now the orchestra’s conductor laureate.

Alsop has also served as music director of the Eugene Symphony in Eugene, Oregon. Furthermore, she was the associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony in Richmond, Virginia, from 1988 to 1990. On September 20, 2005, she also became the first conductor ever to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

Alsop conducted her first recording in 2000 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in a selection of works by Samuel Barber, which was released as part of the American Classics Series on Naxos.

One of the highlights of Alsop’s recording with Naxos includes a Brahms symphony cycle with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

 Her skills as a music director have so far graced major orchestras in Colorado, Bournemouth, Baltimore and, most recently, São Paulo. Her interpretative style combines a natural flair for rhythm with a glowing, expressive cantabile.

On 7 September 2013, she became the first woman to conduct The Last Night of the Proms.

Currently, Alsop is committed to democratizing access to music education by providing a new educational program called “OrchKids”, in which underprivileged Baltimore children will receive free music instruction, based on Venezuela’s El Sistema program.

Indeed, she is no less than a woman; she is a woman with great courage.

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