M arin Alsop's interior designer traveled to her parents' Upstate New York house recently to select some family antiques for her new home, a condo in a historic Mount Vernon building that's brimming with 19th-century charm.
The ground-breaking maestra with the ultra-hip BSO dressing room isn't going traditional on us, is she?
"We're not putting in clawfoot chairs and that kind of stuff," Steve Appel of Nouveau Contemporary Goods assured me. "We're doing very modern pieces."
The pieces raided from Alsop's antiques-dealer father's collection - an 18th-century tricycle, a 20th-century Victrola, for example - will be accent pieces meant to play off the home's architectural features. But the furnishings and overall look will be eclectic and modern.
"I have an Art Deco buffet from the 1930s and I have a George Jetson dining table," Appel said, referring to the mix of styles in his own home.
Appel couldn't go into that sort of detail about Alsop's furnishings.
"I have an exclusive with Baltimore magazine. I can't show it or divulge where it is exactly until September."
His secrecy will be rewarded with a five-page spread.
Appel can say this much: it's a 2BR, 2BA condo with a loft and sunken entertainment room and a total of about 1,800 square feet.
He was also free to say what it's been like working with Alsop again. (He gave her BSO dressing room an extreme makeover when she took over as music director in September 2007.)
He said Alsop is very involved in all the details, down to choosing fabrics, wood stains and color combinations. Very decisive. And very hungry.
Alsop is squeezing meetings with her designer in between rehearsals and performances, public appearances and the other obligations of a prominent conductor.
"These guys, she and her assistant - he is right by her side, he drives her back and forth to all these engagements - they spend all day long in Washington and come up here for a meeting and then they have to be at the Morgan choir. We finally figured out we should start feeding them because they're ready to chew their arms off."
Now, when Alsop is on her way over to Nouveau, she calls first.
"She'll be on NPR doing an interview or the National Press Club doing a speech. I'll get a call from her assistant. 'We're in the car. We'll be there in 40 minutes if traffic is good.'
"We'll have diet Cokes and sandwiches ready, and we'll hit the plan."
