Marin Alsop recently made history with her appointment as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony. In 2007 she becomes the first woman to head a major American orchestra, mirroring her ongoing success in the U.K. as Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony since 2002. "Let me say it unequivocally. Marin Alsop is one of the finest conductors on the planet. (Stephen Pettit, Evening Standard, July 2005/Bournemouth Symphony BBC Proms.)

Ms. Alsop is a regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is also one of the few conductors to appear every season with both the London Symphony and the London Philharmonic orchestras and has appeared as a guest conductor with many other distinguished orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Boston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic ... read full bio

Marin Alsop recently made history with her appointment as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony. With the 2007-08 season she becomes the first woman to head a major American orchestra, mirroring her ongoing success in the U.K. as Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony since 2002.

The first artist to win Gramophone's "Artist of the Year" award and the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conductor's Award in the same season, Alsop won the Classical Brit Award for Best Female Artist of 2005. Also in 2005, Marin Alsop was named a MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this most prestigious American award. In 2006 she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's BBC Radio 3 Listeners Award. Radio 3 listeners, voting for the award, called her "a breath of fresh air in the music world", "a fantastic charismatic conductor" and praised her "boundless enthusiasm". In 2007 she received the European Women of Achievement Award.

Ms. Alsop is a regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is also one of the few conductors to appear every season with both the London Symphony and the London Philharmonic orchestras and has appeared as a guest conductor with many other distinguished orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Boston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Tokyo Philharmonic.

In September 2006 Ms. Alsop led the American premiere of Nicolas Maw's opera, Sophie's Choice at the Washington National Opera. She made her debut with the Opera Theater of St. Louis conducting John Adams' Nixon in China and conducted a fully staged production of Bernstein's Candide with the New York Philharmonic in 2004, which was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Ms. Alsop continues her association as Conductor Laureate of the Colorado Symphony following her highly successful 12 year tenure there as Music Director. She also continues as Music Director of California's acclaimed Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which she has headed since 1992. In addition, Ms. Alsop has held the position of Principal Guest Conductor with both the City of London Sinfonia and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with whom she made numerous critically acclaimed recordings.

Among the highlights of Alsop's acclaimed recording collaboration with Naxos are a Brahms symphony cycle with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and an ongoing series of recordings with the Bournemouth Symphony, which includes Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, and the symphonies of Kurt Weill. One of Alsop's first projects as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony will be a Dvorak symphony cycle, also for Naxos.  On the recent release of her performance of Brahms' Third Symphony with the LPO, the Baltimore Sun wrote, "Alsop seems to have moved into a higher gear ... The result is glowing music-making, rich in character and atmosphere."  In addition to her orchestral recordings, Alsop can also be heard regularly as a commentator on NPR's Weekend Edition program "Marin on Music," BBC's Radio 3, and XM Satellite Radio.

In 2006, Alsop was the only classical musician invited to attend the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland alongside presidents, prime ministers and CEOs of the world's most powerful companies. She has been profiled in Time and Newsweek, appeared on NBC's Today Show, and was featured as ABC News's "Person of the Week". Marin Alsop is a native of New York City; she attended Yale University and received her Master's Degree from the Juilliard School. In 1989 her conducting career was launched when she was a prizewinner at the Leopold Stokowski competition in New York, and in the same year, was awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood.