The mission of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship is to mentor, support, and promote women conductors as they advance in their professional careers.

Announcing the 2024-26 TACF Fellow and Award Winners!

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Taki Conductors

Conducting the world’s top orchestras and leading operas and ballet productions in the world’s major houses, including:

Baltimore Symphony

BBC Philharmonic

Chicago Symphony

Cleveland Orchestra

Dallas Symphony

Hong Kong Philharmonic

Philadelphia Orchestra

London Philharmonic

London Symphony

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Munich Philharmonic

Orchestre de Paris

São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP)

Chicago Opera Theater

English National Opera

Glimmerglass

Göteborg Opera

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Opera Bastille Paris

New York City Ballet

New Zealand Opera

Royal Opera House of Mumbai

Santa Fe Opera

Theatro São Pedro

Zurich Opera

Conductors

Music Directors, Chief Conductors

Nationalities

Principal Guest Conductors

Resident Conductors

Assistant Conductors

%

Have or are completing a Masters Degree or PhD

%

Teach masterclasses

%

Mentor other women conductors

Started a music initiative, program, or ensemble

La Maestra logo

A TACF conductor has won La Maestra since it was started

Alena Hron
Alena Hron
Thanks to her musical energy and passion, Alena Hron is winning favor with musicians not only at home in the Czech Republic but also abroad. From the 2024/25 season, she will be the chief conductor of the South Czech Philharmonic. In early 2024, she was selected as Fellow in the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, a two-year award that includes intensive coaching and mentoring with Marin Alsop and other music industry professionals and opportunities to conduct leading orchestras.

2024 Fellow

About

The Challenge

“Girls can’t do that!”

In 2002, it was more likely that a woman could become the leader of a G7 nation or a four-star officer in the U.S. military, than become the conductor of a major American orchestra. 

Twenty years later, these odds have improved due, in part, to the work of the TACF, but there is much more work to be done.

As of June 5, 2023, women run 10.4% of Fortune 500 businesses equally 52 female chief executives in total, an 18% rise from this time last year. Of the 193 member states of the United Nations, 13 countries have women serving as head of government (14%).  Yet, only 9.2 percent of the world’s music directors are women, an orchestra’s top conducting job, barely up from 8.5 percent reported in 2006.

Less than 10% of conductors around the world are women.

The Response

In 1984, after hearing “girls can’t do that” and being rejected from conducting programs, Marin Alsop took her conducting career into her own hands and started a professional orchestra in New York City, the Concordia Orchestra. With the financial support of Tomio Taki, the Concordia Orchestra performed under the baton of Marin Alsop for 18 years. As Marin’s career took off and she began conducting around the world, Mr. Taki asked, “what about the other women conductors?” With Mr. Taki’s commitment to fostering talented women through active mentorship and Marin’s entrepreneurial spirit, the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship was created in 2002. In recognition of the historic achievements of its Founder and President, the Fellowship was renamed the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship (TACF) in 2019.

Over the past 20 years, the fellowship has provided intensive coaching, mentorship and financial support to aspiring female conductors. Today, all 36 recipients are working to ensure a more equitable future for classical music through their artistry and advocacy, and among them they hold 22 Music Director or chief conductor positions of orchestras around the world.

It is a privilege to be in a position to impact the lives of aspiring women conductors. I can clearly see what is needed to assist emerging conductors in the pursuit of their dreams and want to make the road easier and more rewarding for them. I have never ascribed to the philosophy that, ‘It was tough for me so it will be tough for you.’ My philosophy is: ‘It was tough for me so that I could make it easier for you.’

Marin Alsop

About The Fellowship

The Taki Fellowship is currently a two-year award that primarily includes intensive coaching and mentoring with Marin Alsop and other music industry professionals.  The TACF honorarium for Fellows is $25,000 over the two years; other awards are distributed on a merit basis. Since 2003, thirty women conductors have been chosen to participate in the program.

Mentoring Program

In 2022, The Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, with generous support from AT&T and the She’s Connected by AT&T initiative, launched its first Mentoring Program with the goal of mentoring 10 additional conductors each year. Now in its second year, the Fellowship has added 20 additional conductors to the TACF family and is pleased to announce the 2024-2025 Mentee cohort.

In addition to providing free mentoring to additional conductors, the Mentoring Program is providing Mentoring experience to TACF alumni conductors, expanding the TACF network of women conductors, and collecting research and data to create a mentoring model for the future.

To be able to be part of this program has been a huge inspiration for me. The fact that a personality like Marin, the mentors and all the people working to make this program possible, all of you with incredible busy agendas devotes time and energy to help young conductors in the beginning of the career creates heartwarming sense of hope and belonging to a community, which is particularly significant given the competitive and solitary nature of this profession.

2022-2023 Mentee

As part of the AT&T collaboration, Alsop and Alexandra Arrieche (TACF 2011 Fellow) were featured in the She’s Connected campaign shared across digital and social platforms. Launched in 2020, She’s Connected showcases the multi-hyphenate nature of women in sports and mentorship. AT&T is taking action to address the inequality many women face by supporting them in and out of their respective professional fields. In doing so, AT&T deepens its commitment to women in sports and entertainment, as well as women in business through “She’s Connected by AT&T.”

Sabina Ahmed, Assistant Vice President of Sponsorships and Experiential Marketing at AT&T, elaborates:

“The AT&T She’s Connected program is proud to support the next generation of female conductors through the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship Mentoring Program. Using our platform allows us to elevate women and create impactful change through mentorship now and in the future to help them achieve anything they aspire to accomplish.”

About Marin Alsop

Marin Alsop; Photo by Kym Thompson.A trailblazer and glass ceiling breaker, Marin Alsop has achieved numerous firsts for female conductors:

  • First woman to become
    • Music Director of a major American orchestra (Baltimore Symphony Orchestra),
    • Brazilian orchestra (São Paulo Symphony Orchestra),
    • Principal Conductor of a British orchestra (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra) and,
    • Chief Conductor of a Viennese orchestra (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra).
  • In 2013 Marin was the first woman to conduct the Last night of the BBC Proms.
  • She is the only conductor to receive the MacArthur Fellowship.

One of the foremost conductors of our time, Marin Alsop represents a powerful and inspiring voice. Convinced that music has the power to change lives, she is internationally recognized for her innovative approach to programming and audience development, deep commitment to education, and championing of music’s importance in the world. The first woman to serve as the head of a major orchestra in the United States, South America, Austria and Britain, she is, as the New York Times put it, not only “a formidable musician and a powerful communicator” but also “a conductor with a vision.”

The 2023-24 season marks Alsop’s fifth as Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which she leads at Vienna’s Musikverein and Konzerthaus, as well as on recordings, broadcasts and international tours; her first as Artistic Director & Chief Conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony; and her first as Principal Guest Conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. She also holds positions as Chief Conductor of the Ravinia Festival, where she curates and conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s annual summer residency, and as the first Music Director of the National Orchestral Institute + Festival (NOI+F) at the University of Maryland, where she launched a new academy for young conductors and leads the NOI+F Philharmonic each June.

A full decade after becoming the first female conductor of London’s Last Night of the Proms, Alsop made history again in September 2023, as both the first woman and the first American to guest conduct three Last Nights in the festival’s 128-year history. In spring 2024, she makes her company debut at the Metropolitan Opera, leading John Adams’s oratorio El Niño in a fully staged new production starring Julia Bullock and Davóne Tines. Other 2023-24 highlights include a new production of Bernstein’s Candide with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, an all-American program to inaugurate her four-season Philharmonia appointment, Penderecki’s seldom-heard opera The Black Mask with the Polish National Radio Symphony, and returns to the podiums of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

For Marin’s full biography, please go to her website here.

News

Philadelphia Orchestra names a new conductor

Philadelphia Orchestra names a new conductor

The Philadelphia Orchestra is adding a seasoned American conductor to its artistic leadership team. Marin Alsop, who served as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s music director for nearly a decade and a half, will become Philadelphia’s principal guest conductor starting this Fall 2024.

Innovation

Arch Sinfonia

Arch Sinfonia

Arch Sinfonia, founded and led by Chloe van Soeterstede, is a cross-art chamber orchestra based in London, Comprising musicians from across the world.  Collaborations have included projects with the London Russian Ballet School, the Manchester Singers and painters from South West London.

Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra

Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra

Founded and led by Jeri Lynne Johnson, the mission of the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra is to take the audience beyond spectatorship to participation in the musical experience by combining artistic excellence with cultural diversity and innovative community engagement.

Intersection Contemporary Music Ensemble

Intersection Contemporary Music Ensemble

Founded and led by Kelly Corcoran, Intersection is a flexible contemporary music ensemble dedicated to challenging the traditional concert experience, exploring music of the 20th and 21st centuries, supporting living composers, presenting programs for younger audiences, embracing collaboration, technology and the avant-garde, while expanding, respecting and embracing the musical and cultural diversity of Nashville.

Thalassa Project

Thalassa Project

The Thalassa Music Project develops projects with classical music as a starting point and we organize high-quality workshops, talks, round tables and concerts with the aim of breaking down the barriers between artists and society, with dissemination as a premise.  In three sentences: we promote classical music at a professional level; we transmit our passion to the public; we create a positive impact on society.

Learn about other initiatives started by Taki conductors

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