Marin Alsop took on the role of principal conductor with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007, becoming the first woman appointed to lead a major American orchestra, while simultaneously building an extensive international profile. Few conductors of her stature have also maintained deep involvement in jazz.
Born in New York on October 16, 1956, she grew up in a musical household; her father played in Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. She studied at Yale University and earned a violin performance degree from the Juilliard School. Drawn to Leonard Bernstein, she worked with him at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts, and she also trained under Boston Symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa. During the 1980s she established two jazz ensembles, the swing-oriented String Fever and the Concordia Orchestra, which examined intersections between jazz and classical traditions. Her first recording appeared in 1992 when String Fever released Fever Pitch on Naxos. In 1991 she was named director of the Cabrillo Music Festival, and in 1993 she became conductor of the Colorado Symphony. Her longstanding partnership with hornist Kristin Jurkscheit, an orchestra member, drew attention, although it had begun well before her appointment.
Alsop assumed leadership of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 2002 and remained until 2008, its first female conductor. Recognition followed swiftly: the Royal Philharmonic Society Conductor Award and Gramophone Magazine’s Artist of the Year both came in 2003, and in 2005 she received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” the first conductor so honored. Her selection for Baltimore generated considerable notice yet proved lasting; she held the post until 2021. There she launched the OrchKids initiative, modeled on Venezuela’s El Sistema program. After serving as artist-in-residence at London’s Southbank Centre during the 2010–2011 season, she took the podium of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra in Brazil in 2012. With that ensemble she toured extensively, securing its debut at the BBC Proms in 2012 and continuing until 2019. That same year she became the first woman to serve as chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien), a position she still held in the mid-2020s. In Britain she has worked as principal guest conductor with both the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the City of London Sinfonia, and in 2023 she was appointed artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Her recordings, issued primarily on Naxos with orchestras she has led, focus heavily on American composers such as Bernstein and Barber while encompassing a broad and varied repertory. In 2015 she recorded her mentor Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3 (“Kaddish”) with the Baltimore Symphony. Two albums of Bernstein’s orchestral music followed in 2018 on Naxos with the São Paulo State Symphony, marking the centennial of the composer’s birth. Named the first principal conductor at Ravinia Festival outside Chicago in 2020, she released highlights from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess with the Philadelphia Orchestra on PentaTone Classics in 2021 and a live account of Bernstein’s Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra on LSO Live. She remained productive throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing five albums in 2022 on Naxos, Avie, and Signum Classics, then three more in 2023 on Naxos and Cedille that featured composers ranging from Kevin Puts and Malek Jandali to Mahler’s re-orchestrations of Schumann symphonies. In 2024 she made her first recording with the Vienna Radio Symphony, accompanying violinist Baiba Skride and violist Ivan Vukčević in music by Britten. Her discography then exceeded one hundred releases.
