Philadelphia Orchestra appoints Marin Alsop as principal guest conductor

• Marin Alsop, 67, has been appointed as the principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the upcoming season.
• Alsop, the first woman to lead a top-level American orchestra, served as the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2007 to 2021.
• She agreed to a three-year term with the Philadelphia Orchestra, starting with a 2024 tour of China, conducting for a few weeks per season.

Marin Alsop will become principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra next season, succeeding Nathalie Stutzmann.

Alsop, 67, was music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2007-08 through 2020-21, the first woman to lead a top-level American orchestra. She agreed to a three-year term with the Philadelphia Orchestra starting with a 2024 tour of China, the organization said Tuesday. She will conduct it for two or three weeks per season.

Alsop debuted with the orchestra in 1990 and has led it 32 times. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music director since 2012-13, reached out to her along with the orchestra’s management. She said the orchestra had long put aside its reputation for a heavy string sound, developed when Eugene Ormandy was music director from 1936-80.

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“It’s a much different organism that when I first conducted them,” she said. “They’re super-flexible. They’re super-engaged. They’re super-enthusiastic,

She is in her fifth season as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and her first season as chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony and as principal guest conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. She began in 2020 as the chief conductor of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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Alsop is to make her Metropolitan Opera debut in April leading the company debut of John Adams’ “El Niño.”

In 2005, she received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”