Laura Jackson, music director of the Reno Philharmonic.
“Today, only 9.2% of the world’s music directors are women,” writes Noah Glick in Thursday’s (3/23) Sierra Nevada Ally (Carson City, Nevada). “One of the people trying to change this is Marin Alsop, the first woman to become music director of a major American orchestra, and the only conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, colloquially known as a ‘genius grant.’ In 2002, Alsop formed the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, whose mission is to ‘mentor, support and promote women conductors as they advance in their professional careers’ … Alsop and her fellowship’s influence will be felt this weekend, as the Reno Philharmonic presents the latest in its Classix series: [Anna] Clyne’s Cello Concerto. Laura Jackson, the Reno Phil’s music director, is a former Taki Alsop fellow, and guest conductor Irene Delgado-Jiménez is a current fellow. Kristin Jurkscheit is the fellowship’s executive director, and all three women recently [spoke] about how to get more women in classical music…. Jurkscheit: I want there to be women getting the attention they haven’t gotten. Ten percent of conductors are women across the world, so we’ve got a long, long way to go.”
