Marin Alsop is well known as the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, but this weekend she will be conducting a different sort of production.
Alsop will lead the three-day Women of the World-Baltimore Festival gathering that is expected to draw thousands to Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and nearby venues. But music is far from the focus.
Although Alsop acknowledges that the festival might strike some as an unusual way to fill a concert hall, she says it is consistent with the symphony's larger goals.
"We have a strong commitment to be a resource for the community," she said. "Although it seems off mission, it is on mission."
It's the latest in a series of unconventional steps taken by the BSO to broaden its audience. In 2008, the symphony started OrchKids, an after-school program that provides musical instruments and meals to public school students. Two years later, it launched "Rusty Musicians" a training camp that gives amateur musicians a chance to play with the symphony.
But while those programs revolve around music, WOW-Baltimore will focus primarily on nonmusical subjects, from the serious to the humorous. More than 45 panels and workshops, and nearly 200 presenters, will address topics including human trafficking, "guerrilla knitting," and the philosophy and inspiration of food and wine.
"Baltimore, under Marin Alsop, is definitely at the forefront of a growing trend to connect to the world of ideas," said Judith Kurnick, vice president for strategic communications for the League of American Orchestras. "They certainly are pioneers."
Kurnick said a few orchestras are exploring ways to combine music and other subjects, such as a series in which the Cleveland Orchestra has been investigating links between "music and the brain." She said the league organizes a food drive called Feeding America in which 250 orchestras, including the BSO, collect food for the poor.
But
Kurnick said she can't think of another American orchestra that has planned such an ambitious, nonmusic-oriented festival as a way to use its concert hall.
"That's a really important area that orchestras are exploring — allowing concert halls to be used in interesting ways," she said. Compared with a program about music and neurology, WOW-Baltimore "is more populist. It has the potential to reach a much broader segment of the population."
Modeled after a highly successful event held last year in Britain called WOW-London, and planned in partnership with London's Southbank Centre, WOW-Baltimore is a new festival "for and about women," designed to enable participants to explore a wide range of issues and celebrate achievements by women in fields ranging from science and business to politics and the arts.
To accommodate WOW-Baltimore, the Meyerhoff is being transformed into a temporary convention center or "town hall," with areas for a vendors' marketplace, dining, panel discussions, "speed" mentoring and live performances. Activities will spill over to the nearby