Marin Alsop continues her push for putting more women on the podium

Starting in August 2026, Barbara Hannigan will become chief conductor and artistic director of Iceland Symphony Orchestra (currently she is principal guest conductor of Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, since 2019, and associate artist of London Symphony Orchestra, since 2022).

In 2021, Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim took over as the first female music director of one of the nation’s top opera houses — the San Francisco Opera — and in March 2022, she became just the fourth woman to conduct a production at Lyric Opera of Chicago.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra announced in October 2021 that Nathalie Stutzmann would take over as its music director in 2022-23, becoming just the second woman to hold such a position with a major American orchestra.

Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki, who serves as chief conductor emeritus of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and was principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 2017 to 2022, was one of the top candidates to succeed Jaap van Zweden as music director of the New York Philharmonic.

Karina Canellakis has been the chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra since 2019 and the principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra since 2021.

JoAnn Falletta, the woman (along with Marin Alsop) in the vanguard of this movement, has been music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra since 1999, and also is music director laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Brevard Music Center and conductor laureate of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra.

As the classical-music world joins the rest of the country in celebrating Women’s History Month in March, it can point to the accelerating strides that these women as well as other up-and-coming female conductors, composers, singers and instrumentalists are making.

“It’s much better. It’s an absolute revolution compared to 10 years ago,” said Marin Alsop, the first female music director of a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony. She ended her 14-year tenure there in 2021 and now serves as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as principal guest conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She’s also chief conductor and curator of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Alsop believes that much of the sudden progress that women are making can be attributed to the Me Too movement, which gained force in 2017 after the sexual-abuse allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. These changes are part of a broader call for diversity in the classical realm, including a push for racial equity and inclusion driven by Black Lives Matter. That movement, which began in 2013, gained increasing momentum after the 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black resident of Minneapolis by a white police officer.

“The recent social movements have impacted every area, and classical music has not remained immune, which is fantastic,” Alsop said. “These are changes I hoped to see in my lifetime, but I didn’t dream it would go so quickly. It’s great.”

Alsop, who won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2005, can take at least partial credit for some of the improvements in the classical field for women conductors. In 2002, she founded what is now called the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, which provides coaching and other career support for emerging female conductors. The program flew under the radar for many years, but now is gaining new attention.

“In 2022, we had 140 applicants from everywhere in the world,” she said. “And the level is so much higher. The women are coming into their own finally, and I’m absolutely thrilled about it.”

Some classical-music leaders have expressed concerns about a possible backslide in some of these gains that women have made in recent years or perhaps even a backlash against them, but Alsop remains defiant.

“Not if I have anything to say in it,” she said. “Now that the door is partially open, we have to together lean on it with all our combined weight to push it wide open.”

A version of this article was previously published on Experience CSO.