Marin Alsop

One of the foremost conductors of our time and a powerful and inspiring voice, Marin Alsop is in her second season as principal guest conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra. The three-year contract will involve a regular presence in the Orchestra’s subscription series in Philadelphia; at its summer festivals in Vail, Colorado, and Saratoga Springs, New York; and on tour. She made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1990.

Ms. Alsop is the first woman to serve as the head of major orchestras in the United States, South America, Austria, and Great Britain. A “formidable musician and a powerful communicator” and a “conductor with a vision” (The New York Times), she is internationally recognized for her innovative approach to programming and audience development, her deep commitment to education, and championing the importance of music in the world. She is also the first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

The 2025–26 season marks Ms. Alsop’s third as artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony and her third as principal guest conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. She is also chief conductor of the Ravinia Festival, where she leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s annual summer residency, and the first music director of the National Orchestral Institute + Festival at the University of Maryland, where she launched a new academy for young conductors and leads the NOI+F Philharmonic each June. She served as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra from 2019 to 2025; she is now honorary conductor.

Highlights of Ms. Alsop’s 2025–26 season include her five-concert Carnegie Hall Perspectives series, celebrating her long association with the storied venue and highlighting the institutions with which she collaborates over the season, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, with which she presents the centerpiece of her Perspectives series—a program that includes the New York premiere of John Adams’s The Rock You Stand On. She conducts the Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and ORF Vienna Radio symphonies; the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; and the Philharmonia Orchestra; and leads Washington National Opera’s new production of Bernstein’s West Side Story. She also returns to Japan on tour with the Polish National Radio Symphony. Last season, Ms. Alsop became the first United States-born woman to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic.

In 2021, Ms. Alsop assumed the title of music director laureate and OrchKids founder of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which she continues to conduct each season. During her outstanding 14-year tenure as its music director, she led the orchestra on its first European tour in 13 years, released multiple award-winning recordings, and conducted more than two dozen world premieres, as well as founding OrchKids, its groundbreaking music education program for Baltimore’s most disadvantaged youth. In 2019, after seven years as music director, she became conductor of honor of Brazil’s São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, with which she continues to undertake major projects each season. Deeply committed to new music, she was music director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music for 25 years, leading 174 premieres.

Ms. Alsop has longstanding relationships with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras and regularly guest conducts major international ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris, besides leading the La Scala Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, and others. In collaboration with YouTube and Google Arts & Culture, she developed and spearheaded the “Global Ode to Joy,” a crowd-sourced video project to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary in 2020. A full decade after making history as the first female conductor of London’s Last Night of the Proms, she became the first woman and first American to guest conduct three Last Nights in the festival’s long history in 2023. She made her triumphant debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2024, leading a new production of John Adams’s oratorio El Niño that showcased her “deep command of Adams’s music” (Financial Times, UK).

Ms. Alsop’s discography comprises more than 200 titles, some of which have been recognized by BBC Music and received Emmy nominations, in addition to GRAMMY®, Classical BRIT, and Gramophone awards. She has recorded works from the standard repertoire and music by a variety of contemporary composers, championing American music in particular. Her recordings include releases by Decca, Harmonia Mundi, and Sony Classical, as well as acclaimed Naxos cycles of works by Brahms with the London Philharmonic, Dvořák with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Prokofiev with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. Recent releases include John Adams’s City Noir, Fearful Symmetries, and Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra on Naxos, which was nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Orchestral Performance; highlights from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess with The Philadelphia Orchestra on Pentatone; a live account of Bernstein’s Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on the LSO label; and collections of works by Kevin Puts and Margaret Brouwer and a complete Schumann symphonic cycle for Naxos. Her newest recording, Abstractions featuring music by Anna Clyne, was released in September 2025 on Naxos.

Among Ms. Alsop’s many awards and academic positions are the 2025 Golden Baton Award, the highest accolade conferred by the League of American Orchestras; the 2019 World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award; the 2021–22 Harman/Eisner Artist-in-Residence of the Aspen Institute Arts Program; and the 2020 artist-in-residence at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts. She is currently director of graduate conducting at the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute. She holds honorary doctorates from Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Juilliard School.

To promote and nurture the careers of her fellow women conductors, Ms. Alsop founded the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in 2002. The Conductor, a feature documentary about her life, debuted at New York’s 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and has subsequently been broadcast on PBS television and screened at festivals and in theaters nationwide. It was nominated for the 2023 Emmy for Best Arts and Culture Documentary and recognized with the Naples International Film Festival’s 2021 Focus on the Arts Award.