Well, this is unusual

Marin Alsop is currently principal director at Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Britain. She has just been appointed (unanimously by the board of directors) as the musical director of the Baltimore Symphony. Alsop is the first woman to hold such a position at a major US orchestra.

Now, the way the BBC has the story, the orchestra members themselves are none too happy about this appointment, but not too clear on why they're opposed. The story is written to lead you to believe that it's because she's a woman, but there's a reference to a musician on the search committee complaining that their artistic expertise was being disregarded.

Gramophone is clear that she is the top choice for the board because she has a good history of keeping orchestras in the black and Baltimore is currently $12 mil. in the hole (because of their new concert hall). I have managed to gather that her musical tastes run toward more contemporary American composers, but her recent recordings include Barber, Bernstein, Weill, Brahms, and Hersch. Quite honestly, I'm impressed, the woman seems to know how to make money without resorting to Mozart and Beethoven, it is almost impossible to get the rich old ladies to show up for anybody but dead Europeans.
Gramophone confirms the controversy, but leads you to believe it's because her name was leaked to the press by a musician a day early.

I think that the Washington Post got it right, "In May, Glicker [president of the symphony] said that opinions in the orchestra about potential candidates to replace the conservative, very 'old world' Temirkanov were 'volatile.'" The old guy's got a houseful of musicians that aren't going to be too happy about playing for a lady whose hero is Bernstein.


I had a better opinion of the BBC than that.