“Girls can’t do that,” Alsop recalls her violin teacher telling her at age nine, of becoming a conductor. “I’d never heard a phrase like that,” Alsop says.
In her years of cultural leadership, she’s been more than just an internationally renowned conduit for the intentions of history’s great composers and the sounds filling a concert hall. She’s also absorbed the hopes of young baton-holding aspirants and underserved musicians everywhere, nurturing their dreams and spreading them far and wide.
The first woman to lead a major American orchestra Marin Alsop talks about her tough road to the top of classical music and the new documentary about her life “The Conductor.”
As Marin Alsop leaves the Baltimore Symphony after 14 years, the field is taking a step backward: 25 major American orchestras, no female music directors.
When Marin Alsop steps down at the end of August, concluding a Quite Literally Historic 14-year tenure as the first woman to lead the Baltimore Symphony.