Around the Music Festival

The Philadelphia Orchestra has announced the appointment of Marin Alsop as principal guest conductor. She succeeds Nathalie Stutzmann for a three-year term beginning with the 2024/2025 season. Alsop’s orchestral debut was in 1990, and she has already made 32 appearances at the podium.

Allsopp, 67, was born in 1956 in New York City and served as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2021, making her the first female conductor to serve as Music Director of a major American orchestra. She will serve as Principal Conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra beginning in the 2019/2020 season.

She also served as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Katowice Symphony Orchestra of the Polish National Radio from the 2023/2024 season. She also serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in the UK for three seasons beginning with the 2023/2024 season.

Her first major assignment will be an upcoming tour of China. The Philadelphia Orchestra has strong ties to China, having given a benefit concert in the 1940s for Norman Bethune, a Canadian-born socialist and surgeon who served in the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-Japanese war, as well as being the first American orchestra to tour China in 1973, and in November 2023 The 50th anniversary concert is being held in Beijing.

Photo：Luca Migliore