Best Of: Groundbreaking Conductor Marin Alsop / Poet Ocean Vuong

Fresh Air

NPR

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4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

In 2007, Alsop became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony. But on the way to great success, she faced plenty of rejection. "Girls can't do that," Alsop recalls her violin teacher told her at age nine, of becoming a conductor. "I'd never heard a phrase like that," Alsop says. "You know, it never occurred to me that there was something that girls couldn't do." Alsop was mentored by Leonard Bernstein, and has conducted major orchestras around the world.

Also, John Powers reviews the new HBO Max crime thriller Tokyo Vice.

Finally, Vuong is author of the acclaimed novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. His novel was published in 2019, the same year he won a MacArthur "genius" grant. It was also the same year his mother died. "Ever since I lost her, I've felt that my life has been lived in only two days," Vuong tells Tonya Mosley. "There's the today where she is not here, and then the vast and endless yesterday where she was." Vuong has a new poetry collection called Time Is a Mother, which he describes as "a search for life in the aftershocks of death."

Transcript

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0:00.0	From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend.
0:07.9	How many kids can say they knew at the age of nine they wanted to conduct?
0:12.0	Our guest, Marin Alsop, did, but she was told girls don't become conductors.
0:16.8	After facing all sorts of rejections, she became the first woman to lead a major American
0:21.3	orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
0:24.8	There's a new documentary about her called The Conducted.
0:28.8	So a search for life in the aftershocks of death.
0:32.4	We hear from Ocean Vuong, his new collection of poems is about his mother's death.
0:37.7	His acclaimed novel, on earth, where briefly gorgeous, was based on his early life as the
0:42.8	Vietnamese immigrant raised by his single mother who couldn't read and worked in a nail salon
0:48.0	for 25 years.
0:50.2	After John Powers reviews the HBO Max series, Tokyo Vice.
1:03.9	Here's some of the things that were said about my guest, Marin Alsop, early in her career,
1:09.1	when she fought to be accepted as a conductor.
1:12.0	These are quotes from fellow conductors who found it too much of a stretch to take a female
1:16.9	conductor seriously.
1:19.3	Here goes, a sweet girl on the podium can make one's thoughts drift toward something else.
1:25.6	For me, seeing a woman at the podium, it's not my cup of tea.
1:29.9	This quote gets right to the point, I don't really like women conductors.
1:35.2	Alsop became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra in 2007 when she became
1:41.1	the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a position she held for 14 years.
1:47.0	There were other firsts, including first woman to be the principal conductor of the
	...

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