WHY WE'RE WATCHING: Female conductors are still uncommon enough to attract attention simply by doing their job, but it's Marin Alsop's passionate commitment to musical communication and her undeniable power on the podium that are responsible for her steady rise over the last decade. Her performances and recordings have garnered much acclaim, with her most recent album -- the first volume in a series of fellow American Samuel Barber's orchestral music -- honored as disc of the month by the British magazine Gramophone.

WHERE SHE'S BEEN: Alsop founded her own chamber orchestra, Concordia, in 1984. "My motivation was to figure out how to conduct; there's no secret about that!" Mission accomplished. She's currently music director of the Colorado Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, who play on the Barber series. High-profile debuts in recent years have included the London Symphony and the New York Philharmonic, and she's made adventurous recordings of American composers such as Joan Tower and Christopher Rouse.

WHERE SHE'S GOING: With five more albums of Barber to go for Naxos, Alsop remains committed to American music. But her ambitions are broader: "I'm very anxious to be the first woman to record all the standard repertoire! When you go into a record store, you can't buy any standard repertoire with a woman conducting -- not one piece. I'd love to do at least the Tchaikovsky symphonies and other things that I feel very close to."

HER SECRET PAST: Alsop's name turns up in some unexpected places: as a violinist on albums by Carly Simon, Paul Simon, Mel Tormé, and Marianne Faithfull, for example. "It's me! That's my former life. It was great fun. I did commercials and films and albums with artists and a couple of videos --- one with Paul Simon. String Fever [a swing band Alsop founded] has played on two of Billy Joel's albums. I think it's great for serious classical musicians to experiment in music that has a different rhythmic emphasis and really stretches your flexibility. There's an inherent prejudice that if you like jazz or something popular you can't be a great artist. I don't understand that at all; certainly, earlier in the century, the really great artists were versatile in both fields."

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR: Thanks to his popular "Adagio for Strings" -- to be included in a later volume of the series -- Barber is a household name, but Alsop has relished digging into the always-romantic composer's lesser-known works. She admires "his ability to develop a large-scale work out of a small cell. Everything that happens is interrelated; it feels very organic, and I think it's so skillfully written. And that's combined with his unabashed, genuine sentimentality, not syrupy but very heartfelt." Alsop hears the World War II-era Second Symphony as "an abstract essay about the concept of flying -- the terror and the excitement and the beauty."

WHY SHE DOES WHAT SHE DOES: Alsop trained as a violinist at Juilliard but conducting remained her first love. "At first I thought maybe it was an aerobic decision, because I love to move around. When you play the fiddle, they yell at you if you do that! But there are probably two parallel reasons. One is wanting to have input over the architecture, the bigger picture of the music. And I think the other one is social: I always gravitated toward some kind of leadership role."

WHO'S INSPIRED HER: More than anyone, Leonard Bernstein, with whom she studied at Tanglewood in the late 1980s. "He was my hero from when I was a little kid. I saw him when I was nine, and I knew right away that I wanted to become a conductor. Studying with him was wonderful because he really exceeded all my expectations. He was extremely generous with his time and his love and his complete attention. Not just to me but to whoever he happened to focus his light on." Leonard Slatkin and Michael Tilson Thomas also rank high on her list.

THOUGHTS ON WOMEN AND MUSIC: The lack of female role models in conducting never bothered Alsop, but inevitably her gender has been a factor in her experience. "Musicians in orchestras have come to me -- always male musicians -- and said things like, 'It was really great working with you. I never noticed you were a woman.' It sounds like a horrible insult, doesn't it? But I understand that once you're in the position, gender should almost be irrelevant; if it is irrelevant, you're doing a really good job. But there are so many issues in getting to the position that are influenced not only by gender but any number of prejudices." She assures us that times are changing, though. "When I go to teach master classes, I'd say it's generally 50/50. And the women in the field never even ask me, 'Do you think I shouldn't? Is it going to be hard?' They have no awareness that it might be a stumbling block, and that's what's really encouraging."

WHAT SHE LISTENS TO FOR FUN: A jazz lover, Alsop cites Marcus Roberts as a favorite among contemporary players. "I think he's super. But I really like the old-timers. I love Charlie Parker and Art Tatum. I think when they were in their heyday, that must be my favorite period in jazz, when it's really turning the corner into another planet."

MAKE A WISH: "I hope that at the end of the 21st century we look back and say, 'We had no idea that art music was going to have such an incredible renaissance.' That's what I hope to see more than anything."

Scott Paulin