Marin Alsop & Johan Dalene

One of the foremost conductors of our time, Marin Alsop is the first woman to serve as the head of major orchestras in the United States, South America, Austria, and Great Britain. Winner of the 2025 Golden Baton Award from the League of American Orchestras, Alsop is also the first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Alsop serves as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Chief Conductor of the Ravinia Festival.
Alsop’s summer 2026 highlights include conducting the London Philharmonia at the inauguration of the Tower of Jesus Christ at the Sagrada Família as well as at the BBC Proms. Alsop concludes her Carnegie Hall Perspectives Artist season with the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. She also returns to the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Bravo! Vail Music Festival and Saratoga Performing Arts Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra; and the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in her role as Chief Conductor. Alsop will also conduct the composition portion of the George Enescu International Competition marking her first appearance with the Romanian Radio National Orchestra.
To nurture the careers of women conductors, Alsop founded the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship to empower extraordinary women conductors through intensive coaching, mentoring, and financial support. Among the 42 award winners, 32 Music Director/Chief Conductor titles are held with orchestras around the world.
In 2021, Alsop assumed the title of Music Director Laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. During her 14-year tenure as Music Director, she led the orchestra on its first European tour in 13 years, conducted more than two dozen world premieres, and founded the music education program OrchKids.

Winner of the 2019 prestigious Carl Nielsen Competition, Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene “is not just a virtuoso like many others, he is a voice. He has a tone, a presence” (Diapason). At the age of 24, he has performed with leading orchestras and in celebrated recital halls both at home and abroad. His ability to “make his Stradivarius sing like a master” (Le Monde), coupled with his refreshingly honest musicality and engagement with musicians and audiences alike, has won him countless admirers. In 2022, he was named Gramophone’s Young Artist of the Year.

After simultaneous residencies with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Gavle Symphony, Johan takes on a new collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, working with conductors such as Antonello Manacorda and Robert Trevino. An advocate for new music, he continues to perform the concerto written for him by Tebogo Monnakgotla, notably with the Berlin Radio Symphony and Giedrė Slekyte, having given the world premiere with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and John Storgards in April 2023. Johan’s other recent and forthcoming highlights include debut performances with the Minnesota Orchestra and Thomas Sondergaard, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Sakari Oramo and San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen; return appearances with the Bergen Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, London Philharmonic, and Warsaw Philharmonic.

Johan is equally passionate about chamber music and will be going back to North America to give recitals, notably on the Vancouver Recital Series, San Francisco Performances and at the Gardner Music in Boston, as well as making his debut tour in Australia. He is otherwise making return appearances at the Verbier and Rosendal festivals, as well as London’s Wigmore Hall, where he is now a regular guest.

Recording exclusively for BIS, Johan released his fourth album on the label in October 2023, a recital disc comprising Ravel’s Sonata and Prokofiev’s Second Sonata, alongside short pieces by Arvo Part, Lili Boulanger and Grazyna Bacewicz. The Strad hailed this album as ‘interesting by its repertoire and marvellous by its quality’. His previous recording featured the Nielsen and Sibelius Concerti, with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic with John Storgards, and garnered Johan his third coveted ‘Editor’s Choice’ from Gramophone Magazine, as well as a prestigious Swedish Grammis Award.

Johan began playing the violin at the age of four and made his professional concerto debut three years later. In Summer 2016, he was student-in-residence at Switzerland’s Verbier Festival (where he made his performance debut in 2021) and in 2018 was accepted on to the Norwegian Crescendo programme, where he worked closely with mentors Janine Jansen, Leif Ove Andsnes and Gidon Kremer. Andsnes subsequently invited Johan to play at the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival and they performed together again in May 2019 at the Bergen International Festival. In 2019 he joined Janine Jansen and other members of the Crescendo Programme for a performance at the Wigmore Hall in London, and at the International Chamber Music Festival in Utrecht.

Johan studied with Per Enoksson, Professor at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, as well as with Janine Jansen, and has also participated in masterclasses with several distinguished teachers, including Dora Schwarzberg, Pamela Frank, Gerhard Schulz, and Henning Kraggerud. He has been awarded various scholarships and prizes, notably from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, The Anders Wall Giresta Scholarship, Queen Ingrid’s Honorary Scholarship, The Håkan Mogren Foundation Prize, Equinor Classical Music Award, Norwegian Soloist Prize, Sixten Gemzéus Stora Musikstipendium, Expressen Cultural Prize Spelmannen and Rolf Wirténs Kulturpris. Johan plays the 1725 ‘Duke of Cambridge’ Stradivarius, generously on loan from the Anders Sveaas’ Charitable Foundation.