One of the foremost conductors of our time, Marin Alsop is the first woman to serve as the head of major orchestras in the United States, South America, Austria, and Great Britain. She is internationally recognized for her innovative approach to programming and is the first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

Alsop serves as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony; Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra; Principal Guest Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra; and Chief Conductor of the Ravinia Festival. She made history as the first female conductor of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. Her long-awaited Berlin Philharmonic debut was in 2025.

To nurture the careers of women conductors, Alsop founded the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship to empower extraordinary women conductors through intensive coaching, mentoring, and financial support. Today, all 36 award winners hold more than 30 music director or chief conductor positions.

Alsop is a 2025–26 Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist, leading concerts by the Philharmonia Orchestra and America at 250 programs with The Philadelphia Orchestra, National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic, and The Juilliard Orchestra.

Other season highlights include opening The Philadelphia Orchestra’s season with the world premiere of John Adams’s The Rock You Stand On, dedicated to her; concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Houston Symphony; Washington National Opera; Polish National Radio Symphony; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

In 2021, Alsop assumed the title of Music Director Laureate and OrchKids Founder of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. During her 14-year tenure as Music Director, she led the orchestra on its first European tour in 13 years, conducted more than two dozen world premieres, and founded the music education program OrchKids. She is the winner of the 2025 Golden Baton Award from the League of American Orchestras.

Yoonshin Song was appointed as Concertmaster of the Houston Symphony in August 2019. Prior to that, she held the same position with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for seven seasons. In Europe, Yoonshin has served as guest concertmaster of the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer for several years, and she has led the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra under numerous top-tiered conductors, such as Sir Simon Rattle, Klaus Mäkelä, Daniel Harding, Mikhail Pletnev, and Antonio Pappano. She also served as guest concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the KBS Symphony Orchestra.

Beyond her first chair duties, Yoonshin has performed as a soloist with many orchestras around the world, including the Houston Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Utah Symphony, New Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Paul Constantinescu Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and the KBS Symphony Orchestra, among many others.

She has also participated as a soloist and a chamber musician in various roles in leading music festivals, including the ones in Verbier, Lucerne, Samos, and Bayreuth in Europe; and the Marlboro, Great Lakes, and Deer Valley in the United States.

Yoonshin has earned many prestigious prizes throughout her career, including top prize awards in the Lipizer International Violin Competition, the Lipinski and Wieniawski International Violin Competition, the Henry Marteau International Violin Competition, and first prize at the Stradivarius International Competition in the United States.

She studied under the tutelage of Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory and with Robert Mann, Glenn Dicterow, and Lisa Kim at the Manhattan School of Music.