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Marin Alsop, Ravinia's chief conductor and curator, is tireless in her support of other female conductors. “We really have to stay the course," she says. "You have to keep your foot on the gas. You can’t let up."
©Patrick Gipson/Ravinia Festival
“The old boys’ network has existed for centuries,” says Marin Alsop in “The Conductor” (2022), a documentary about her life and work as the first female music director of a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony.
“We need to create the old girls’ network, so that we can really be there for each other and support each other.”
In 2002, Alsop began doing just that. With support from Japanese textile industrialist Tomio Taki, she established the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship, designed to help talented women advance their podium careers. Now renamed the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, the program offers modest cash prizes and invaluable opportunities to work with Alsop and other conductors on and off the podium. Twenty years and 30 Taki awards later, the “old girls’ network” that Alsop envisioned is taking shape.
The Ravinia Festival celebrates the fellowship’s 20th anniversary as part of a weekend of programs July 29-31 titled “Breaking Barriers.” Alsop, Ravinia’s chief conductor and curator, will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on July 29, along with three Taki Fellows: Jeri Lynne Johnson, Laura Jackson, and Anna Duczmal-Mróz, as well as a program on her own on July 30. Including master classes, exhibits and a panel discussion, the weekend focuses on the challenges overcome and those still faced by conductors who happen to be female.
The fellowship grew out of Alsop’s work with the Concordia Orchestra, a group she founded in 1984 with Taki’s help. Trained as a violinist, she had been rejected twice for the Juilliard School’s conducting program.
An an aspiring conductor, she had no way to learn her craft. “When I played the violin, I could practice all the time,” Alsop told an audience at a 2015 lecture at Loyola University Maryland. “But for conducting, unless you have 40 people come over to your house every day to play, you can’t ever practice. So you can’t ever get experience because no one will let you conduct because you didn’t conduct before.”
In the early 1980s, Alsop she approached Taki with a blunt appeal. Would he underwrite an orchestra for her to conduct? He agreed, and Alsop began building her podium experience. She was hailed as a pioneer, but as her career gained momentum, she realized that the frontier for female conductors was not opening up.
In 2001, Alsop recalled, “Mr. Taki said to me, ‘We achieved this goal, getting a woman on the stage in this role. But what about the other women?’ ”
Grateful for his years of support, Alsop called the fellowship “a thank-you for Mr. Taki,” He and Alsop contributed money to fund the award; in 2003, Carolyn Kuan became the first Taki Concordia Conducting Fellow. Now music director of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Kuan has a long list of conducting credits that range from the Royal Danish Ballet to the San Francisco Symphony. She is one of 19 Taki Fellows who are music directors or chief conductors of orchestras, opera companies and ensembles in the United States and beyond.
Now given every two years, the Taki’s monetary award is relatively small; $20,000 over two years for the top winner. The more enduring prize is the mentorship that Alsop offers the top winners and runners-up. She is a master teacher, and for Taki Fellows just starting their careers, working with her on the podium is invaluable.
Alsop is delighted that Taki Fellows are becoming a community, willing to help one another, offering advice, psychological support and when they can, jobs. Laura Jackson, the 2004 Taki Fellow and since 2009, music director of the Reno Philharmonic in Nevada, thinks something even more significant is happening: “I feel there’s this river of fabulously gifted women that is turning into a flood.”
Alsop is a little more cautious about the momentum. “I’m vigilant because I don’t trust that the doors are going to stay open,” she said. “We really have to stay the course. You have to keep your foot on the gas. You can’t let up. As soon as you do, there will be people who want to go back to the old way.”
Excerpted with permission from a feature published in Ravinia Magazine.
