Marin Alsop decided to be a conductor when she was 9 years old.
Her father, the concertmaster of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, took her to a
Young People’s Concert. There young Marin saw the man who would be her guiding
light throughout her career, Leonard Bernstein.
“He was jumping around like an idiot, snapping his fingers and nobody was yelling at
him,” she remembers. “I could do that.”
Raised by two hard-scrabble musicians living in a basement apartment in Manhattan,
even at this early age she’d bumped up against “all the rules and all the
snobbery” in the classical music world.
“I could tell early on that I wasn’t going to be getting on with the establishment.”

Playing in a youth orchestra other parents and the conductor had complained she
smiled too much and was “trying to lead the orchestra” from a back seat in the
second violin section.
When she told her violin teacher in Juilliard’s youth program that she wanted to be a
conductor, the teacher told her: girls don’t do that.
Her mother, a cellist, was outraged. Her father bought her a box of batons. They
served as her first orchestra.
Alsop went on to be the first woman appointed to lead a major orchestra, the
Baltimore Symphony. Getting there wasn’t easy.
Alsop, the Dorothy E. and DuWayne H. Hansen Musical Arts Series guest, told students
during a talk Monday at Bowling Green State University that “you’re the only one
responsible for creating your future.”
The conductor said: “For me that’s what defines success — having a dream and
actualizing it. It’s not attached to making money or measuring your stature;
it’s how well you can achieve your own personal dream.”
For Alsop that was becoming a conductor, though for a bit she wanted to be “a rock
star.”
She settled for leading a swing band, String Fever, which she led for 20 years, and
as an early crossover group garnered attention and praise.
When she failed to get admission into The Juilliard School’s conducting program —
once she was thrown out of an audition for making a joke — she decided she’d
start her own orchestra Concordia, through which she resurrected work by jazz
legend James P. Johnson and an early opera “Blue Monday” by George Gershwin,
Alsop worked her way up the conducting ranks, through Eugene, Ore., and the Colorado
Symphony. In 2007 when she was selected as music director for Baltimore, the
musicians rebelled. The Washington Post reported on the controversy on page 1.

She said she faced two choices: turning down the job, which most people advised, or
being in a place where there was mutual mistrust.
Alsop decided to confront the situation, showing up at rehearsal unannounced and
addressing the orchestra. She told them she wouldn’t sign her contract unless
she had their blessing. They said they wanted her to take the position. She said
her relationship with the orchestra is one built on mutual respect and success.

She’s used the podium there as a bully pulpit. She wanted to the orchestra and its
musicians to connect with the community, especially the underprivileged members
of the community. So she proposed an educational program where each musician
would go into the Baltimore slums and mentor a child. Everyone would participate
and they wouldn’t be paid for it. The musicians balked.
She went back, reworked the program. She took $100,000 from the $500,000 she received
from her MacArthur Fellowship and got a two-to-one match. ORCHKids was launched.
It was featured on “60 Minutes” and now serves 500 students, though
participation from orchestra members falls far short of 100 percent.
Dean Jeffrey Showell of the College Music later said except for buying her first car,
Alsop ended up investing all her MacArthur grant to support the program.
Alsop knows from her own life how important music is.
“I think we were all born to play music together,” she said.
“From playing an instrument you learn such an incredible skill set … Nothing comes
quickly. You have to practice in order to get better. You have to start to
understand how to motivate yourself to do work, how to budget your time.”
Playing an instrument is “such a boost to your self-esteem.” Music “was critical to
my growth as a human being.”
The El Sistema program in Venezuela, which is the model for ORCHKids, shows that
music can make a difference. “Music,” she said, “is such a transformational
force.”