Marin Alsop

The Harvard Faculty Club is not the most forward-thinking of places. Chandeliers, antique furniture, and plenty of paintings of old white men don’t exactly scream 21st century. The Faculty Club was, therefore, an odd choice of venue for a moderated conversation with one of the foremost voices working to modernize classical music.

Marin Alsop is a rarity in the world of conductors. In a profession long associated with and dominated by European men, she’s an American and she’s a she. She is also the music director of the Baltimore Symphony and the first conductor to win the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (often dubbed a “Genius Grant”).

Last Tuesday, Alsop, a protégé of the peerless American conductor Leonard Bernstein ’39, was on campus to receive the Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award. She also participated in an open discussion with Dean of Arts and Humanities Diana Sorensen. The conversation went everywhere and anywhere—from the demographic problems plaguing symphonies worldwide, to her par- ents’ love of early American furniture, to the Instagram username “didyoupractice” that she uses to check up on her son’s online exploits.

Dressed in a sleek, all-black pantsuit with accompanying gold hoop earrings, Alsop positively exuded control, an important characteristic when you’re tasked with keeping around 100 musicians (and their egos) in check. Her bearing was so regal, so imperiously European, that every time she spoke it was a surprise the accent was the frank American strain we’re accustomed to hearing every day.

Many suspect that the American orches- tra is in trouble. On a typical night at the symphony, the audience consists, largely, of older couples. Thanks to new forms of entertainment, such as streaming technologies, younger generations have far more options for leisure and entertainment than generations past. The subscription model, which was once the bedrock of fiduciary stability for the symphony orchestra, is crumbling.

In many ways, the event itself was a living, breathing example of the demographic problem symphonies face now.

When I arrived at the Faculty Club 20 minutes before the event, I looked to be the only student in attendance. All the other attendees looked to be at least 60 years old. As the hour for the event drew nearer and the room filled, more students started to filter in (most of whom I recognized as members of the Harvard/New England Con- servatory dual-degree program or orches- tras on campus like the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra), but the plurality of people still seemed to be older and white.

Concerns about an aging audience are not new to the classical music world. During the conversation, Alsop cited articles from the 1930s worrying about the future of the audience: “It was the same concern that the audience was going to die... and they did,” Alsop said with a laugh.

Symphonies have always been something of an acquired taste. Alsop compared them to drinking a fine wine. “Young people aren’t thinking about the wine they’re drinking beyond the kind of buzz they’re going to get.... But as you grow older you’re thinking more about the taste, more about the depth of it,” she said. “I think classical music is very much like that.”

Nevertheless, Alsop believes that classical music has the potential to be more popular across generations—it just takes education. Venezuela’s “Sistema” program, for instance, finances music education for a quarter of a million young musicians. As a result, according to Alsop, albums by Gustavo Dudamel, the Venezuelan conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, sell better in Venezuela than those of Madonna.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under Alsop’s baton, has tried to bridge the music education gap and diversify, both ethnically and generationally, the world of classical music. To this end, Alsop pioneered OrchKids, an after-school music program for kids in Baltimore City neighborhoods. The program, which started out with 28 children, has blossomed into an 850-student program that, this year, is sending multiple students to Interlochen’s prestigious summer program and the Baltimore School for the Arts.

Alsop also discussed her parents, who are both deceased classical musicians and whose instruments are currently played by Baltimore Symphony Orchestra members. Growing up, Alsop’s family collected early American furniture. For Alsop, the beauty of these pieces was in their imperfections or oddities. She believes music should be the same way. According to Alsop, American ensembles are often too obsessed with technical perfection, sacrificing meaning in the process.

Professional success didn’t come easily to Alsop. When she was appointed music director in 2005, some musicians in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra voiced public opposition to the decision, complaining that Alsop did not have the necessary musical pedigree to conduct the orchestra.

“[It was] one of those things that I’ll never get over, to be honest,” said Alsop. Yet, she now believes that that opposition was based on a frustration at the dire straits the orchestra was in. According to Alsop, the Baltimore Symphony was $16 million in debt at the time, hadn’t made a recording in a decade, and often played to a half-full hall.

“They were suffering from a lack of success,” said Alsop. “Success creates good feelings, so I decided to just go in and make them successful. And that’s what I did.”

As comfortable in the Harvard Faculty Club as in the linoleum-floored cafeterias of Baltimore City public schools, it’s hard not to believe that Alsop can make more than just Baltimore’s symphony successful.