You Can't Do That: Conducting a Life Against the Odds

A moving, energetic memoir by the pioneering conductor Marin Alsop, the first woman to head major orchestras in the United States, Berlin, and elsewhere.

When she was nine years old, Marin Alsop’s father took her to see Leonard Bernstein conduct the New York Philharmonic. She watched the famous conductor onstage and knew that someday she would be up there too.

You Can’t Do That: Conducting a Life Against the Odds is the story of a stubborn young girl—raised in a music-obsessed family and ex...