The Kotas Project

Marin Alsop born on October 16, 1956 in New York City. She began piano studies at the age of 2 but her primary instrument is the violin. She studied at the Masters School for high school at the age of 12 and went to Yale at the age of 16. Alsop transferred to Juilliard and completed both her bachelor’s and master’s in violin performance there. For several years after she graduated she had a freelance career in New York playing with various ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Mostly Mozart, New York Chamber Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, and several broadway musicals.

Alsop’s conducting career began in 1979 when she begins studying with Carl Bamberger. She then later studies with Harold Farberman before attending Tanglewood Music Center where she attends as the Leonard Bernstein Conducting fellow and studies with Leonard Bernstein, Gustav Meier and Seiji Ozawa. During this summer she became the first and the only woman to ever win Koussevitsky Conducting prize by Tanglewood. Shortly after this summer her conducting career began to take off; in the same year she became Music Director of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra until 1996. In 1990 she accompanies Leonard Bernstein to Japan as he establishes the Pacific Music Festival and makes her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Since then she has worked with the Colorado Symphony, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. She currently is Music Director for the Baltimore Symphony, Principal Conductor of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, and beginning in 2019 Chief Conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.