LONDON (Aug. 19, 2026) — Maestra Alsop spoke with The Telegraph ahead of her performance at the BBC Proms with the Philharmonia Orchestra on August 24.

“This year, the 69-year-old New Yorker will be conducting seven works in the American Classics Prom and, with a gutsy cowgirl glint in her eye, she runs me through the various ‘American landscapes’ celebrated in the works by Gershwin, Bernstein and Copland she is about to let loose. She smiles horizon-wide at the ‘simple life and prairie possibilities in the open intervals’ of Copland’s Appalachian Spring (1943-1944) and the ‘frenzied celebration of urban grit, urban nightlife’ in Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1960).”

The profile, written by Helen Brown, describes a rich conversation on the Proms, women conductors, American music, and more.

“How much did that night move the dial for women?”

“Oh, I think it’s cumulative,” [Alsop] says. “It can’t just be one event.” She becomes contemplative. “I had thought when I was appointed with the Baltimore Symphony in 2007 that that would open up a lot more doors. But look, it’s taken until now for another woman to be appointed to a big orchestra.” Elim Chan takes the baton at San Francisco in 2027.

A practical shrug. “We have to see more and more women in these roles and different types of women. Young women, older women, tall women, short women, you know, different ethnicities. We have to see that in order to grow comfortable with the idea. It can’t just be me.”

Read the full article here.

Photo Credit: Chris Christodoulou