May Festival taps Marin Alsop as 2027 director

The Cincinnati May Festival just wrapped its 2026 season, but organizers are already looking ahead to next year.

One day after the close of this year’s festival, the organization announced celebrated conductor and frequent collaborator Marin Alsop as its 2027 festival director, continuing the festival’s relatively new rotating artistic leadership model. 

Next year’s festival, scheduled for May 17-30, will center on the voices and stories of women through a lineup curated by Alsop and May Festival Director of Choruses Matthew Swanson. Planned programming includes the U.S. premiere of a new work by composer Anna Clyne, Julia Wolfe’s “Fire in My Mouth,” Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony featuring text by former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and Roxanna Panufnik’s “Across the Line of Dreams.”

The programs will celebrate “the power, resilience and artistry” of women composers and collaborators she has worked with throughout her career, Alsop said in a statement.

“It’s a tremendous honor to serve as Festival Director of the 2027 Cincinnati May Festival,” she continued. “This festival has such a rich and meaningful history, and I’m excited to collaborate with Matthew Swanson and the extraordinary May Festival Chorus.” 

A familiar face returns

Alsop is no stranger to Cincinnati audiences or the May Festival stage.

She conducted R. Nathaniel Dett’s “The Ordering of Moses” during the festival’s 150th anniversary season, revisiting a work the festival originally premiered in 1937. She has also led performances of works by Samuel Barber and most recently conducted the May Festival Chorus in Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” during a subscription concert with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. 

“The May Festival Chorus shared an instant bond with Marin when she conducted the Chorus as part of the 150th anniversary Festival,” Swanson said. “The Choruses and I are excited to work more in depth with Marin in 2027.” 

Alsop serves as artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony, principal guest conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She also leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s annual summer residencies at Ravinia Festival. 

Her appointment also continues a broader shift in how the May Festival approaches artistic leadership.

Founded in 1873, the May Festival is one of the country’s oldest choral festivals. In recent years, the organization adopted an annual festival director model that pairs a guest artistic leader with the festival’s director of choruses to shape each season’s programming and collaborations. 

Alsop follows a recent line of festival directors that includes composer Julia Wolfe, soprano Renée Fleming and vocalist Julia Bullock, whose tenure concluded Saturday night with a finale built around a reimagining of “Porgy and Bess”. Bullock took center stage as “Bess” in her own curation of the opera, which reframed and elevated some of its most recognizable music.

Centering women’s voices

Several works on the 2027 program reflect projects Alsop has championed throughout her career.

Her collaboration with Carnegie Hall on the Global Ode to Joy project led to Smith’s reimagining of the text used in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Alsop also conducted the U.K. premiere of Wolfe’s “Fire in My Mouth,” a multimedia work examining labor, immigration and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. 

Panufnik’s “Across the Line of Dreams” focuses on the stories of Harriet Tubman and Rani Lakshmibai, while Alsop’s longtime relationship with Clyne recently resulted in the 2025 album “Abstractions” with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. 

Alsop has also spent much of her career advocating for gender equity and music education. She founded the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in 2002 to support women conductors through mentorship and financial assistance, and previously became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra during her tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. 

May Festival Executive Director Julianne Akins Smith said Alsop’s programming will blend familiar repertoire with newer works while emphasizing the human voice as a connecting force.

“Marin Alsop’s directorship of the May Festival brings one of the world’s foremost conductors to Cincinnati to celebrate the voices of women through music,” Akins Smith said. 

May Festival