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PAN PIPES Fall 2019 9 Marin Alsop Launches Global Beethoven Anniversary Season M arin Alsop has announced a worldwide project for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth called All Together: A Global Ode to Joy. She will lead performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on five continents with nine renowned partner orchestras as part of a year long global project. e ambitious project reimagines Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a 21st-century call for unity, justice, and empowerment. Partners will reimagine the concert experience for their communities, presenting newly created music alongside the music of Beethoven and artists from their region. As part of each performance, "Ode to Joy" will be translated into a local language. "Ode to Joy is about standing up and being counted in this world," Alsop said. It's about believing in our power as human beings. Everyone will be tied together by this experience. And I think that's the important element – that through this project, we will bring diverse communities together, and communities who don't normally work together". Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in the international music scene, a Music Director of vision and distinction who passionately believes that "music has the power to change lives". She is recognised across the world for her innovative approach to programming and for her deep commitment to education and to the development of audiences of all ages. She was initiated as an SAI Honorary Member by the Volusia County Alumnae Chapter in 2001. Her outstanding success as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) since 2007 has been recognised by two extensions in her tenure, now confirmed until 2021. As part of her artistic leadership, Alsop has led the orchestra on their first European tour to the BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival and created several bold initiatives: 'OrchKids', for the city's most deprived young people, and the BSO Academy and Rusty Musicians for adult amateur musicians. Alsop became Principal Conductor and Music Director of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) in 2012, where she continues to steer highly creative programming and outreach activities, and which she conducts on the international stage: this includes a tour to Asia in 2019 with two concerts at the Hong Kong Arts Festival and three European tours featuring critically acclaimed performances at major summer festivals including the Lucerne Festival and in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Salzburg and Vienna; her contract continues to the end of 2019, when she becomes Conductor of Honour. In September 2019, Alsop becomes Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Marin Alsop conducts the world's major orchestras, with recent and forthcoming European highlights including the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestre National de France, London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In the US, Alsop regularly conducts the Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago Symphony orchestras, including at their summer residencies at Saratoga, Blossom and Ravinia. Further highlights of the 2018/19 season include the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra, and the Orchestre National de France, following summer festival debuts at the Grafenegg and MITO festivals with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a second residency with the Britten-Pears Orchestra at the Snape Proms. At London's Southbank Centre where she is Artist in Residence, this season she conducted Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, following performances with the orchestra at the BBC Proms with recent performances of Brahms, Schumann and Verdi on period instruments. In September 2013, Marin Alsop made history as the first female conductor of the BBC's Last Night of the Proms, which she returned to conduct in 2015. Her extensive discography has led to multiple Gramophone awards and includes highly praised Naxos cycles of Brahms with the LPO and MDR Leipzig, Dvořák with the BSO, Prokofiev with OSESP, and further recordings for Decca Classics, Harmonia Mundi and Sony Classical. She is dedicated to new music, demonstrated in her 25-year tenure as Music Director of California's Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music In 2019 Alsop was awarded the prestigious Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum and is the only conductor to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Amongst many awards and academic positions, she is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music and Royal Philharmonic Society, and was recently appointed Director of Graduate Conducting at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute. She attended the Juilliard School and Yale University, who awarded her an Honorary Doctorate in 2017. Her conducting career was launched in 1989, when she was the first woman to be awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize from the Tanglewood Music Center and began studying with her most important mentor, Leonard Bernstein. The concerts will begin in December 2019 and continue throughout 2020 in South America, Europe, Australasia, Africa and North America. — CarnegieHall.org SAIS IN THE NEWS

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