Marin Alsop

Available for 20 days

Norman Lebrecht talks to conductor Marin Alsop about her life and career. Growing up in New York, Marin recalls life as a single child in a musical household, and how that motivated her into a career in music despite her efforts to find independence as a mathematics student. Graduating as a violinist from The Julliard School, she pursued conducting, and after a series of rejections had her breakthrough at Tanglewood, training there with the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. He became her mentor, but it was her encounter with him years before, at the age of 9, that had first sparked her desire to become a conductor. Marin reflects on becoming the first female chief conductor of a UK orchestra, and about her fruitful work at the helm of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. But she tells Norman that her proudest achievement has been her work with children on the community-based OrchKids programme at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She explains why other initiatives to promote equal access to music matter so much, including the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship for young female conductors. Making her recent debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, Marin became the first American woman to conduct the prestigious German orchestra, and as she approaches her 70th birthday in 2026, she reveals her latest ambitions: to record the symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovich.