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Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Music Director Marin Alsop came to New York to make her Carnegie Hall debut on February 9, conducted with passion and vision, and conquered the musical hearts of an audience who honored her with numerous standing ovations.
The evening’s program featured Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Steven Mackey’sTime Release (NY Premiere), Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919 version). New York Times music critic James R. Oestreich, wrote in his review of the concert on February 11: “Certainly the playing here, in Ms. Alsop’s first New York appearance as music director, was excellent, testifying both to the fine condition in which Ms. Alsop’s immediate predecessor, Yuri Temirkanov, left the orchestra and to Ms. Alsop’s quick ability to capitalize on it. And Ms. Alsop—nattily dressed in a black pantsuit, with red trim at the cuffs and under the back flap, and conducting without a score—showed complete control, infectious enthusiasm and canny pacing.”
 Prior to the concert, Masters School students, parents, alumnae/i and faculty gathered for a special “cocktails and conversation” reception with Marin Alsop in a private room at Carnegie Hall.
As the twelfth music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra beginning with the 2007-08 season, 1973 Masters School alumna Marin Alsop is the first woman to head a major American orchestra, mirroring her ongoing success in the United Kingdom as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra since 2002. A regular guest conductor of 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 distinguished orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony, and Tokyo Philharmonic.
A native of New York City, an honorary trustee of The Masters School, a graduate of Yale University, and holder of a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, Marin Alsop was honored in 2005 with both Gramophone’s “Artist of the Year” award and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor’s Award—the first artist to receive both honors in the same season. She has also received the Royal Philharmonic Society’s BBC Radio 3 Listeners Award and a European Women of Achievement Award.
In addition, in 2005 Marin Alsop was the recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship—the so-called “genius grant,” which comes with a $500,000 no-strings-attached award. Thus far, she has used the grant to support a conducting fellowship for young women (the Taki-Concordia Fellowship), and to commission several new works of music.
Brava, Maestra Alsop!!
Below: Prior to the evening's performance, friends of The Masters School gathered for a special "Cocktails and Conversation" reception with Marin Alsop in a private room at Carnegie Hall.
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