To create her world of ideas, Marin Alsop teams with global music groups

Most top-tier classical music conductors are jet-setters. How else to handle schedules that often have them conducting opera in Milan or Berlin one week and orchestral concerts in London or Paris or New York or Chicago the next?

Among this well-traveled cohort, Marin Alsop has to be one of the most frequent flyers. In addition to marking her sixth season as Ravinia’s chief conductor this summer, Alsop has been the principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2024. She became chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2019 and is now the orchestra’s honorary conductor. She is also artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. From 2012 to 2019, she was principal conductor, then music director, of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra in Brazil. She is currently the orchestra’s conductor of honor.

In addition, Alsop has conducted the final piano concerto rounds of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, and will work with the Cliburn as it adds a conducting competition in coming years. She has debuted at the Metropolitan Opera and became the first woman to conduct the prestigious Last Night of the Proms concerts that close the annual BBC Proms season at London’s Royal Albert Hall. And for more than two decades, Alsop has led a program focused on female conductors that she founded in 2002, now known as the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship.

But Alsop seemed a bit taken aback in a recent video interview when asked about her lengthy, far-flung list of professional commitments. “I don’t feel like it’s so many things,” she said. “I’m actually trying to do less.” But after a pause, she added with a smile, “It’s [doing less ] not going well.”

Accepting the principal guest conductor post in Philadelphia was an offer she simply couldn’t refuse.

“I love that orchestra,” Alsop said. “It was one of the very first orchestras to give me a subscription concert early in my career, so I have a long association with them. I love Yannick [Nézet-Séguin, Philadelphia’s music and artistic director]. I have tremendous respect for him. 

“I think Philadelphia is a very forward-thinking orchestra,” she said. “That’s curious because, when you think of Philadelphia, you think of the old tradition — the ‘Philadelphia Sound,’ the old days, and all that. But in the last few decades, they’ve really transformed themselves. They’re an orchestra that’s vibrant, that’s very much of its time. Like most orchestras, they have a lot of young players who are really engaged.”

Alsop worked with Jeremy Rothman, Philadelphia Orchestra’s chief artistic officer, when he held a similar role at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. As music director in Baltimore from the mid-2000s through the 2018-19 season, Alsop was the first woman to head a major American orchestra. She continues that association as the orchestra’s conductor laureate.

“Jeremy and I have a long history as well,” she said. “He’s very innovative. [Philadelphia’s artistic team is] really curious about new music, about new projects.” Alsop was on the Philadelphia podium last year for the world premiere of Gabriela Lena Frank’s Picaflor: A Future Myth, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music. She is excited about a future Philadelphia project that will combine live music with a stop-motion animated film.

But Philadelphia also appeals to her for more mundane reasons. “I would be lying if I didn’t say it’s really great to be working one hour from Baltimore, where I live,” Alsop said. “And Philadelphia is a really vibrant city, a lot of people moving in, lots of people going to the orchestra concerts.”

For the past five years, Ravinia has been an enthusiastic partner in one of Alsop’s most innovative ideas, the Breaking Barriers project. For one weekend each summer, Alsop and the CSO turn their focus to fields where women have been seriously underrepresented. The series was launched in 2022 with a weekend of performances, panel discussions and workshops focused on women conductors. In 2023, women composers were in the spotlight. Breaking Barriers 2024 featured women involved in space exploration, and last summer the focus was female chefs. This year’s Breaking Barriers weekend, July 24-25, highlights women composers for film, TV and video games.

“It’s hard to believe it’s the fifth year of Breaking Barriers,” Alsop said. “The first couple of years were especially impactful and moving for everyone. I’ve enjoyed every year in very different ways,” she said “Last year with female chefs was fantastic. It was so interesting because it’s all about creativity and having license, giving agency to women to pursue their dreams. These are issues that are front and center and quite relevant, sadly, still today.”

This season’s focus on women writing for the screen grew out of Alsop’s friendship with Laura Karpman, whose music for film, television and video games has earned her five Emmys and an Academy Award nomination.

“We studied together at Juilliard,” Alsop said. “She studied with [composer] Milton Babbitt, so she’s a very serious composer who ended up going into the film world. We were talking, and I said I’d love to do a project bringing together women composers and film, because I don’t think people have any awareness of how challenging that profession is for women. She fell in love with the idea, so she’s co-curating it with me.”

Something more general motivated Alsop as well. Young musicians, she’s found, are especially connected to John Williams, whose music for such blockbuster films as “Jaws,” “Star Wars” and “E.T.,” as well as multiple Olympic Games, are familiar the world over. Ravinia’s July 24-25 concert, public discussion, and workshop will explore how film, TV and video game composers build that connection between audience and story.

“Whenever I speak to young composers, 90 percent of them say their biggest influence was John Williams,“ Alsop said. ”That’s the music they were exposed to as kids.

“I want people to understand the impact of music in film and how it can determine your interpretation, your emotional response to what you’re seeing.”

One reason Alsop is working with so many different groups is because she is constantly coming up with ideas for new projects. Having different artistic partners increases the odds that more of her ideas will come to fruition.

“It’s very hard for me, when I get a great idea, not to pursue it. It keeps me alive and engaged,“ she said. ”Working on so much repertoire, it’s really stimulating. It keeps you on your toes.”

But Alsop also craves a long-term, close relationship with one institution, like the one she has had in Baltimore. "For me, having opportunities to build a situation and work within a particular community, that’s what I truly love.”

She compared her guest conducting duties to being a visiting aunt or uncle rather than a parent. “You come in,” she said, “you take the kids for the day, and then you send them back. You take them on cool trips — everybody gets a trip.

"It’s a close, important relationship, but it’s not the same as being the head of the household, guiding a family day in and day out.

“At the moment, I’m not really in that situation,” she said. “It’s a little bit of a searching time for me, weighing different things.”

This is an excerpt from an article published in the Ravinia magazine. Reprinted with permission.