Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Britain since September 2002, Marin Alsop has already made an enormous impact on audiences in the region and nationwide, appearing on UK television and many radio programmes, reaching a wider public through BBC Radio 3 relays of the concerts, and through her consistently positive reception in the press. “Her appointment is a landmark for the BSO... she has shown herself to be a conductor who makes a difference... knows precisely what she wants and how to get it” (Daily Telegraph, Oct 2002); “Since Marin Alsop took over, each successive concert has raised the roof higher and higher.” (The Times, Nov 2002). Future plans with the BSO include tours to Europe and a series of recordings for Naxos, and largely as a result of her work with the BSO she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Conductor of the Year 2002. Music Director of the Colorado Symphony since 1993, where her innovative programming has won several national awards, Alsop will stay on there as Music Director Laureate for 2 more years. Her reputation in North America has been secured through her high-profile guest appearances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony (Washington), Dallas, Toronto, Montreal, St Louis, Atlanta, Houston, Cincinnati and Baltimore symphonies, and through her very successful Music Directorship at the Cabrillo Festival of contemporary music. In June 2003 she retured to the Chicago Symphony for 2 programmes at the Ravinia Festival, and in 2003/4 she also returns to give subscription concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, St Louis Symphony, and will conduct the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in Bernstein’s opera Candide. In addition to many operas in concert, she conducted her first fully-staged Traviata in 2000 and will conduct Nixon in China with the St Louis Opera in 2004. Marin Alsop has become an annual guest of both the London Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras in their subscription seasons – a privilege afforded to few conductors. Having worked with almost all the major UK orchestras prior to her Bournemouth appointment, her guesting engagements in Europe continue to heighten her international profile. She has appeared with orchestras such as the Orchestre de Paris, the orchestras of Lyon and Toulouse, the radio symphony orchestras of Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Berlin (RSB), Helsinki Philharmonic and Netherlands Philharmonic; besides returning to many of these orchestras, 2003 also sees her conduct for the first time in Sweden (Swedish Radio Symphony) and Italy (Orchestra de Santa Cecilia in Rome). In October 2004 she makes her debut with the Munich Philharmonic. Further afield, she has appeared with the Sydney Symphony, and made her Tokyo debut with the New Japan Philharmonic in April 2002. She returns to Japan in 2004 for concerts with the Tokyo Philharmonic. As Principal Guest with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra 1999-2003 she had a huge success with her Barber orchestral cycle on Naxos (6 CDs), generating nominations for a Grammy, a Gramophone Award and a Classical Brit Award. In Summer 2002 Naxos released a recording of Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony with the Colorado Symphony, which has had excellent reviews internationally. She has made several recordings with the Colorado Symphony of works by American composers such as Rouse and Tower for Koch, and a premiere recording of Gershwin’s opera Blue Monday on RCA Red Seal with the Concordia Orchestra. From 2003 she begins a series of single-composer discs for Naxos with the Bournemouth Symphony, starting with Adams, Glass and Bernstein, and moving on to Weill and Bartok. Marin Alsop is a native of New York City, attended Yale University, and received her Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School. In 1989 she won the coveted Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she was a pupil of Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, and Gustav Meier. The same year she was a prizewinner at the Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition in New York.
On the net:
http://www.marinalsop.com/
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