What Marin Alsop built at Ravinia started to feel real, she says, in 2022.

Her second summer at the festival, the conductor — the first woman to lead major orchestras in the U.S., Great Britain, Austria and South America — had begun Breaking Barriers, a festival-within-a-festival dedicated to smashing the glass ceiling. The first iteration spotlighted female conductors, like her.

“When I walked into the Ravinia campus, and families were stopping to look at posters of 100 women conductors, many of whom I had never even heard of — that was pretty monumental,” Alsop remembers.

Alsop, who turns 70 this fall, is departing Ravinia after six years as chief conductor and a one-time curator of the festival. During her tenure, she steered the Chicago Symphony through its first regularly convened concerts out of the pandemic and settled it into the renovated Hunter Pavilion.

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Bassoonist Miles Maner, who has worked with Alsop since her subscription debut with the orchestra in 2015, is likewise drawn to her “fearless” programming.

“I can’t think of another conductor with a wider taste in orchestral music than Marin. If it’s written for orchestra, Marin is up for conducting it,” he says. “She’s always keeping an eye on up-and-coming musicians in our field, and ones that have been historically underrepresented. And then, she opens those doors. No one knows better how difficult it is to open new doors in classical music. Marin did that, and she opened some real heavy doors a long time ago.”

Through it all, Alsop very nearly completed a Mahler symphony cycle, conducting all but the Third and Seventh symphonies at Ravinia. (With timing details still to be announced, her future guest appearances will complete the set.) In the meantime, alongside the Philharmonia and Vienna Radio Symphony, she’ll become the first woman in history to record a Mahler cycle, with the first installment due on the Pentatone label next spring.