Marin Alsop

One of the foremost conductors of our time, Marin Alsop is principal guest conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra, beginning with the 2024–25 season. 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 represents a powerful and inspiring voice. Convinced that music has the power to change lives, she is internationally recognized for her innovative approach to programming and audience development, deep commitment to education, and championing of music’s importance in the world. The first woman to serve as the head of a major orchestra in the United States, South America, Austria, and Britain, she is, as the New York Times put it, not only “a formidable musician and a powerful communicator” but also “a conductor with a vision.” 

The 2024-25 season marks Ms. Alsop’s sixth as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which she leads at Vienna’s Musikverein and Konzerthaus, as well as on recordings, broadcasts, and international tours; her second as artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony; and her second 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 residencies, and the first music director of the National Orchestral Institute + Festival (NOI+F) at the University of Maryland, where she launched a new academy for young conductors and leads the NOI+F Philharmonic each June.

Ms. Alsop becomes the first United States–born woman to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic when she makes her long-awaited debut in February 2025, leading the world premiere of a commission by Outi Tarkianen. Other 2024–25 highlights include an evening devoted to Gustav and Alma Mahler with the Philharmonia Orchestra, a world premiere from Nico Muhly with the New York Philharmonic, a reprise of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and return engagements with the symphonies of Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, and San Francisco.

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 honour 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 such major international ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris, besides leading 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, Ms. Alsop became the first woman and the first American to guest conduct three Last Nights in the festival’s 128-year history in 2023. She made her triumphant debut at New York’s 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).

Recognized with BBC Music’s “Album of the Year” and Emmy nominations in addition to GRAMMY®, Classical BRIT, and Gramophone awards, Ms. Alsop’s discography comprises more than 200 titles. These include recordings for Decca, Harmonia Mundi, and Sony Classical, as well as her acclaimed Naxos cycles of works by Brahms with the London Philharmonic, Dvořák with the Baltimore Symphony, and Prokofiev with the São Paulo Symphony. Recent releases include a live recording of highlights from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess with The Philadelphia Orchestra on Pentatone; a live account of Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; a Kevin Puts collection with the Baltimore Symphony; and John Adams and Margaret Brouwer collections for Naxos, a complete Schumann symphonic cycle for Naxos, and world premiere recordings of Malek Jandali concertos for Cedille Records, all with the Vienna RSO.

The first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, Ms. Alsop has also been honored with the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award. Among many other awards and academic positions, she served as both the 2021–22 Harman/Eisner Artist-in-Residence of the Aspen Institute Arts Program and 2020 artist-in-residence at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts; is director of graduate conducting at the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute; and holds Honorary Doctorates from Yale University and the Juilliard School. To promote and nurture the careers of her fellow female conductors, she founded the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship in 2002, which was renamed in her honor as the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in 2020. The Conductor, a documentary about her life, debuted at New York’s 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and has subsequently been broadcast on PBS television, screened at festivals and in theaters nationwide, nominated for the 2023 Emmy Award for Best Arts and Culture Documentary, and recognized with the Naples International Film Festival’s 2021 Focus on the Arts Award.