Marin Alsop

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2014

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the conductor, Marin Alsop. Music Director of both The Baltimore Symphony and The Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, she is a maestro with a mission: music, she believes, is a powerful vehicle for social change. She had the good fortune to be brought up in "a household that exuded possibility" and was filled with music - both her parents played professionally. She took up the piano aged two, swapped to the violin at 6 and then aged 9, saw Leonard Bernstein at work and made the decision that conducting would be her career. Much later she would go on to be mentored by the man who inspired her. It bores her when interviewers ask why there aren't more women conductors - nonetheless her capacity to maximise the few opportunities she was given as a young woman making her way in an exclusively mans' world gives one a flavour of her indomitability. Her day-to-day job after all is working out how to convince 100 experts to do what she wants. She says, "maybe it's being an only child: you want to bring people together and create this big family feeling, I don't know what it is but I always gravitated towards organising." Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.
0:01.8	Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.4	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.9	For more information about the program, please visit bbc.co.uk-radio4.
0:30.0	My cast away this week is the conductor Marin Olsop.
0:37.8	Music director of both the Baltimore Symphony and the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra
0:41.7	she is a maestro with a mission.
0:44.6	Music she believes is a powerful vehicle for social change.
0:48.4	Lucky then that she's such an accomplished driver.
0:51.0	She had the good fortune to be brought up in a household that exuded possibility and was
0:55.3	filled with music.
0:57.0	Both her parents played professionally.
0:59.2	She took up piano, aged 2, swapped to violin at 6 and then at the ripe old age of 9, having
1:04.4	watched Leonard Bernstein at work, made the decision that conducting would be her career.
1:10.0	Much later she would go on to be mentored by the man who had inspired her.
1:14.2	It apparently annoys her a bit when interviewers ask why there aren't more women conductors,
1:18.7	nonetheless her capacity to maximise the few opportunities that she was given as a young
1:23.6	woman, making her way in an exclusively man's world, gives one a flavour of her indomitable
1:29.1	journey.
1:30.1	Her day-to-day job after all is working out how to convince 100 experts to do what she
1:35.6	wants.
1:37.0	She says, maybe it's being an only child, you want to bring people together and create
	...

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