Her Path to the Podium : Music: Years of frustration will be swept aside when Marin Alsop conducts the L.A. Philharmonic tonight.

By FRED CRAFTS

Nov. 14, 1991 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES; <i> Crafts is a free</i> -<i> lance writer based in Eugene, Ore. </i>

EUGENE, Ore. — Missing from conductor Marin Alsop’s spare office in the Eugene Symphony Orchestra’s headquarters is any hint of who she is: no photographs, no knickknacks, no personal touches of any kind.

In fact, the only items that even suggest her profession are a couple of cassettes, an orchestral score and a Eugene Symphony poster on the wall.

This tiny room may be where Alsop presides 14 weeks each year, but its neglected nature indicates that the real dynamic occurs elsewhere--perhaps in the rehearsal hall, in board rooms, on the road. Without question, Alsop seems at her best when unencumbered, on her feet, moving around.

Tonight through Sunday, her burgeoning career will mark a milestone when she becomes the first woman to conduct a winter-subscription series concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Heady stuff for someone who, in three years, has risen from obscurity to limited fame as a female conductor headed toward potential international recognition.

None of that is lost on the 35-year-old New Yorker. But, in the Eugene Symphony offices, she exhibits neither self-importance nor false modesty. She comes across as bright, open, hip, relaxed, witty and committed. She likes to talk about music but not about herself, although the fantasy aspects of her meteoric career get her going.

“It feels like Christmas every day,” she says, with a grin. “I can’t wait to get up and study. So many pieces to learn, so many programs to plan. It’s a lot of work, but, oh, so much fun. It’s hard to imagine it could be more fun.”

Or challenging.

It is no secret that, historically, the music world has virtually excluded women. While the barriers have been coming down, the pace has been slowest in conducting.

Alsop’s ascent has taken her into a realm with few peers. In the process, she has become a standard-bearer, a spokesperson, a symbol--roles she disavows.

“I’m lucky,” Alsop explains. “I’m not the first--there are probably three generations before me of women who conducted--so I don’t have to go in with a marching band, waving flags. I don’t have any of the luggage to carry. I don’t have to prove anything.

“There have been women that have done that. They probably had to endure a lot of stuff--a lot of you-know-what--from people. But I don’t feel it at all. And yet being a woman conductor is enough of a novelty that sometimes it draws more audience, which is a great asset to have.”

She wanted to be a conductor ever since her father took her to one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. Her father, LaMar Alsop, is concertmaster of the New York City Ballet orchestra, where her mother, Ruth, is a cellist. The future conductor began studying piano at 2, switched to the violin at 6. She studied at Yale University from 1973-75, then received a violin scholarship to the Juilliard School, where she earned a master’s degree in 1978.

When denied admission to the Juilliard School’s graduate conducting program, she asked such conductors as Karl Richter, Gustav Meier, Harold Farberman, Walter Hendl and Carl Bamberger to give her lessons.

Unable to obtain conducting work, she founded the New York String Ensemble and String Fever, a female string jazz orchestra, which she led from the concertmaster’s chair. In 1984, with $10,000 from her savings, she started Concordia, a 50-member crossover orchestra that now has its own series at Lincoln Center.

Four years later, after having been turned down three times, Alsop was given the Leonard Bernstein Conducting Fellowship to the Tanglewood Festival.

Bernstein was so captivated by Alsop when she conducted his 70th birthday concert that he took her under his wing. The moment of discovery was trumpeted by a press corps documenting Lenny-mania that summer.

Alsop’s career exploded.

In June, 1989, she was named music director and conductor of the Eugene Symphony; she also has a similar position with the Long Island Philharmonic. In November, 1989, Tanglewood awarded her the prestigious Koussevitsky Conducting Prize--the first time the award had been given in nine years and the first time in its 40-year history to a woman.

“It always comes as a surprise to me that, like when I did Boston Pops, they never had a woman conduct before. It puts things in perspective,” she says.

“We feel that we’ve come a long way in combating sexism, but you realize that . . . we’re just at the threshold, certainly in the music field, if I’m the first woman to have these opportunities.”

If this small but sophisticated Northwest city is any indication, Alsop’s future can be bright. People here are smitten with her. She can apparently do no wrong--and much good: Her orchestra has grown remarkably, both in audience and ability.

The reason, explains principal trumpet player George Recker, is that Alsop is a “100% musician” who is “internally motivated to be the best she can be.”

Concertmaster Leslie Sawyer says that Alsop has “what it takes to be the first woman conductor of a major orchestra.”

Can Alsop have the same impact in Los Angeles that she did here? Hardly, the conductor says.

“This (Los Angeles) is an orchestra that’s played with all the world’s greatest conductors. It can probably play the music whether I showed up or not. My first goal is not to get in the way.”

She laughs. “I don’t dare think about it too much because I’m afraid I’m going to have a heart attack.

“My goal is somehow to bring insight to what I feel Bartok was saying in the Concerto for Orchestra, the last piece he ever wrote. It was somewhat autobiographical. Can I convey that? I feel that I’m just the messenger. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel so much pressure. I feel committed to the message that I’m bringing and, hopefully, they’ll respond to it. And if they don’t, I haven’t done a very good job of conveying the message.”

When Alsop mounts the podium tonight, she says, years of frustration will be swept aside.

“Every time I was rejected--and I have a whole boxful of letters trying to get auditions and jobs and this and that--I really tried to apply myself more,” she says.

“Somehow out of that challenge grew a tremendous perseverance. You just have to keep going.”