If you miss Marin Alsop on the podium at Orchestra Hall this weekend — well, first of all, don’t.
Though she and orchestra representatives won’t confirm one way or the other, Alsop, who made history as the first woman to become music director of a major American orchestra when she assumed leadership of the Baltimore Symphony in 2007, is widely assumed to be among the front-runners for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s music director post once Riccardo Muti concludes his contract extension in 2023.
But if you beg off, rest assured: You’ll have plenty of chances to suss out Alsop’s synergy with the CSO at the Ravinia Festival, where it was announced Thursday that her tenure as chief conductor and curator has been extended through 2025. In addition to a sneak peek of her summer programming, Alsop’s extension announcement also unveiled the inaugural iteration of “Breaking Barriers,” a to-be-annual weekend festival championing diversity in classical music. The festival will be held July 29-31, culminating her 2022 Ravinia engagements.
“I hope it will become a little bit of a signature piece for Ravinia. Everybody seems very excited about it — all the patrons and the board and the people involved,” she said in an interview with the Tribune from her home in Baltimore. “That really encourages me a lot, because, you know, when you think ‘Highland Park,’ diversity is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind.”
“Breaking Barriers'” inaugural year focuses on women conductors, seizing on the joint anniversaries of Margaret Hillis — the founding CSO Chorus director whose centenary was last year — and the Taki Alsop Fellowship, which Alsop founded to support rising women in the field in 2002. Laura Jackson and Jeri Lynne Johnson, both former Taki Alsop Fellows, and Anna Duczmal-Mróz, the just-named 2022-24 fellow, join Alsop on the kickoff program, featuring Jessie Montgomery’s “Source Code,” Michael Daugherty’s “Time Machine” for three conductors and orchestra, and a Frankenstein combination of Sergei Prokofiev’s two “Romeo and Juliet” Suites, as assembled by Alsop.
One doesn’t have to look beyond Chicago to see the ripples of the Taki Alsop Fellowship. Chicago Sinfonietta director Mei-Ann Chen is a former recipient, and two other former fellows lead non-subscription CSO billings later this month: Chicago Opera Theater music director Lidiya Yankovskaya makes her guest conductor debut in family matinees on Feb. 18-19, and Solti Conducting Apprentice Lina González-Granados directs the Civic Orchestra in a Feb. 28 concert at Kenwood Academy. Music of the Baroque director Dame Jane Glover, who leads performances of the concert play “The Chevalier,” makes four women on the podium this month — likely a record for the orchestra, according to CSO archivist Frank Villella.
Alsop’s hypothetical appointment at the CSO would mean two major milestones for the institution, as well: If named, she would be the first woman and first American-born conductor to lead the CSO.
That said, her Ravinia extension somewhat tamps the mounting speculation that Alsop might take up Muti’s mantle, at least immediately. Unlike the Boston Symphony and its summer season at Tanglewood, the CSO and Ravinia have operated under distinct creative leadership since the Fritz Reiner era in the 1950s and ’60s. Jaap van Zweden’s impending 2024 departure from the New York Philharmonic — Alsop’s hometown orchestra and the longtime musical home of her teacher, Leonard Bernstein — adds another layer of intrigue, with both orchestras currently jockeying to court the conductorly creme de la creme in overlapping searches.
But never say never — Alsop doesn’t. When asked directly whether she was angling for the CSO position, Alsop responded bashfully, and not in the negative.
“Oh, well, gosh, that seems … They have a whole process, good grief,” she said with a chuckle.
“I can say I love working with the orchestra — I have such great respect and real fondness for them. I kind of fell in love with them for real last summer. So, let’s see what the future brings.”
Alsop initially served as Ravinia’s “artistic curator” from 2018 to 2019, during which she oversaw the kickoff of what would become a multiyear Leonard Bernstein centennial celebration for the festival. Her calling-card performances of Bernstein’s Mass, reprised in back-to-back seasons, were televised and nationally broadcast on PBS’s “Great Performances.”
Alsop’s Ravinia duties provided a constant during that transitional period. In yet another history-making appointment, she was named music director of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF) in 2019 and ran out her contracts at the Baltimore and Sao Paulo symphonies shortly thereafter. (She holds laureate and honorary titles in both Baltimore and Sao Paulo, respectively, still returning regularly to conduct.)
Included in the “Breaking Barriers” programming is a screening of “The Conductor,” a limited-release documentary which lavishly, even glowingly trumpets the successes of Alsop’s tenure at the Baltimore Symphony — most especially OrchKids, the educational program she considers the crowning achievement of her directorship. In one of its more self-conscious moments, “The Conductor” situates the intraorganizational conflict surrounding the 2005 announcement of her appointment — an ugly episode in which Baltimore Symphony musicians issued a vote of no confidence, lamenting that they had not been properly consulted during the search — as a thing of the past. (The documentary opens Feb. 11 at Landmark Renaissance Place in Highland Park; “Great Performances: The Conductor” airs 8 p.m. March 25 on PBS.)
But more than a year after filming wrapped in early 2020, Alsop painted a different picture in an unflinching exit interview with the Baltimore Sun, in which she claimed that “the BSO has not fully embraced OrchKids” and expressed frustration at the deficit-hobbled organization’s inability to funnel resources into the program, among other ambitious projects. She also admitted that her relationship with the orchestra never fully healed from its initial rupture.
“I feel very close now to the musicians, very connected to them. But will I ever go to sleep with both eyes closed? No. I was really hurt. After something like that, you approach everything with a little bit of suspicion,” Alsop told the Sun.
And how about now? When asked what she would need from her next orchestra or appointment (and Alsop didn’t deny that there would be a next), her answer was immediate.
“The most important thing — to me, anyway — is a can-do mindset. Let’s start with a ‘yes,’ and then we’ll pedal backward,” she says. “I understand that ‘no’ often has to be the answer. But I think when you always start with ‘no,’ you’re limiting yourself.
“I really think that’s what I need: a communicative partner, to just be able to sit and brainstorm and say, ‘What are our priorities? Let’s go get ’em. Let’s make ’em happen.'”
Alsop conducts the CSO in Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1 and Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations,” featuring soloist Luká Vondrácek in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 10 and 8 p.m. Feb. 12 at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; tickets $32-$225; cso.org.
Tickets for the 2022 Ravinia Festival go on sale May 4 for the public and March 30 for donors. For complete programming details as they’ve been announced so far, go to ravinia.org.
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The baiduhai maintains complete editorial control over assignments and content.