Marin Alsop recently made history with her appointment as the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. With the 2007-08 season she becomes the first woman to head a major American orchestra, mirroring her ongoing success in the United Kingdom as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony since 2002. She makes her Carnegie Hall debut this season conducting her new orchestra.

Entering the Baltimore Symphony Stage

Ms. Alsop is a regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is also one of the few conductors to appear every season with both the London Symphony and the London Philharmonic orchestras and has appeared as a guest conductor with many other distinguished orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Boston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Tokyo Philharmonic.

In September 2006 Alsop led the American premiere of Nicholas Maw's opera, Sophie's Choice, at the Washington National Opera. She made her debut with the Opera Theater of St. Louis conducting John Adams's Nixon in China and in 2004 she conducted a fully staged production of Bernstein's Candide with the New York Philharmonic, which was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005.

Ms. Alsop continues her association as Conductor Laureate of the Colorado Symphony following her highly successful 12-year tenure as Music Director. She also continues as Music Director of California's acclaimed Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which she has headed since 1992. In addition, Ms. Alsop has held the position of Principal Guest Conductor with both the City of London Sinfonia and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with whom she made numerous critically acclaimed recordings.

Leonard Bernstein was a mentor and an inspiration to Marin early in her career

In 2006, Alsop was the only classical musician invited to attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, alongside presidents, prime ministers and CEOs of the world's most powerful companies. She has been profiled in Time and Newsweek, appeared on NBC's Today Show, and was featured as ABC News's "Person of the Week". Marin Alsop is a native of New York City; she attended Yale University and received her Master's Degree from The Juilliard School. In 1989, her conducting career was launched when she was a prizewinner at the Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition in New York, and in the same year was awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center.