“At the Ravinia Festival, … it was announced Thursday that [Marin Alsop’s] tenure as chief conductor and curator has been extended through 2025,” writes Hannah Edgar in Thursday’s (2/10) Chicago Tribune. “Alsop’s extension announcement also unveiled the inaugural iteration of ‘Breaking Barriers,’ a to-be-annual weekend festival championing diversity in classical music. The festival will be held July 29-31, culminating her 2022 Ravinia engagements…. ‘Breaking Barriers’ inaugural year focuses on women conductors … and the Taki Alsop Fellowship, which Alsop founded to support rising women in the field in 2002. Laura Jackson and Jeri Lynne Johnson, both former Taki Alsop Fellows, and Anna Duczmal-Mróz, the just-named 2022-24 fellow, join Alsop on the kickoff program…. Alsop … was named music director of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF) in 2019 and ran out her contracts [as music director] at the Baltimore and Sao Paulo symphonies shortly thereafter…. Included in the ‘Breaking Barriers’ programming is a screening of ‘The Conductor,’ a limited-release documentary which … trumpets the successes of Alsop’s tenure at the Baltimore Symphony—most especially OrchKids, the educational program she considers the crowning achievement of her directorship…. (The documentary … airs … March 25 on PBS.)”
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