30 Seconds With Marin Alsop

Alsop Conducts the Juilliard Orchestra on January 25

This fall, first-year conducting master’s student Molly Turner hoped to interview one of her idols, Marin Alsop (Pre-College ’72; BM ’77, MM ’78, violin). But Alsop was starting her latest high-profile job, as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and couldn't break away for a long conversation, so she agreed to a lightning round with Molly. 

How is your approach to a student orchestra different than a professional orchestra?
There’s absolutely NO difference! I probably share more about the composer and music with a student orchestra, but that’s about the only difference.

What is your favorite thing about Brahms’ Second Symphony?
The Second Symphony is a wonderful example of paying homage to the master composers of the past while pushing the envelope to the future. It has an easygoing quality about it that I adore, especially after the struggle that starts his first symphony!

Molly Turner, who received her bachelor’s in composition at Rice University, holds a Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship in Conducting and an Isidore Komanoff Scholarship; this fall she participated in the Dallas Opera’s Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors

Who first believed in you? Watch a video in which Marin Alsop talks about her early years and why studying music is seminal for young people.