She won the Koussevitzky Prize as outstanding student conductor at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1989, where she met her hero and future mentor Leonard Bernstein.

[5] Alsop's initiatives with the BSO have included the Webumentary Film Series, a free iTunes podcast titled Clueless About Classical, and the OrchKids program, directed at underprivileged Baltimore children.

[5] In August 2015, Alsop was appointed director of graduate conducting at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, succeeding one of her mentors, Gustav Meier.

[23] In the UK, Alsop has served as principal guest conductor with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and with the City of London Sinfonia.

[25] She was voted Gramophone magazine's Artist of the Year in 2003 and won the Royal Philharmonic Society's conductor's award in the same season.

In July 2013, OSESP granted her the title of music director and in April 2015 extended her contract to the end of 2019.

They returned to Europe in October 2013, with concerts in Berlin, London, Paris, Salzburg and Vienna [33] and to the Proms in August 2016.

Alsop concluded her OSESP tenure in December 2019 and subsequently took the title of honorary conductor with the orchestra.

Following this, in 2005, Alsop's fully staged production of Bernstein's Candide with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra was nominated for an Emmy Award (DVD: PBS Great Performances/Image Entertainment).

[47] She and the BSO made their first-ever live recording release for iTunes of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

9, From the New World, and Symphonic Variations, was released in February 2008,[49] and was nominated for BBC Music Magazine’s 2008 Album of the Year.

[50] In 2009, Alsop released a recording of Leonard Bernstein's Mass with the BSO that earned a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Album.

[51] In 2010, her recording of Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and soloist Colin Currie won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

8 with the BSO,[54] Nixon in China,[55] and works by Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, and Barber, all on the Naxos label.