Internationally acclaimed conductor and violinist Marin Alsop has been made an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College.
Alsop’s conducting career began in 1989 when she was the first woman to be awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize from the Tanglewood Music Center, where she was a pupil of Leonard Bernstein, the renowned composer.
Alsop is now the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and music director of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra.
In 2007 she was one of eight conductors of UK orchestras to endorse the 10-year classical music manifesto, “Building on Excellence: Orchestras for the 21st century,” which gave free entry to a classical music concert to all British schoolchildren as part of its drive to increase the presence of classical music in the UK.
In 2013 she became the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, repeating this in September 2015.
Alsop is currently Artist-in-Residence at Aldeburgh Music at Snape Maltings in Suffolk, conducting the Britten-Pears Orchestra, which brings together young musicians from around the world.
In 2017 she is delivering masterclasses in London for women conductors, and giving a Women of Achievement Lecture at the University of Oxford. Newnham is planning to welcome Alsop when she visits in the autumn.