Meet the Music Director
Meet the Musicians
Meet the Artistic Advisor
JoAnn Falletta
Instrument: Conductor
Few artists are as important to the fabric of their communities as JoAnn Falletta. Acclaimed by The New York Times as “one of the finest conductors of her generation”, she serves as the Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.. An effervescent and exuberant figure on the podium, she has been praised by The Washington Post as having “Toscanini’s tight control over ensemble, Walter’s affectionate balancing of inner voices, Stokowski’s gutsy showmanship, and a controlled frenzy worthy of Bernstein.” Both on and off the podium, she is a vibrant ambassador for music and an inspiring artistic leader.
Maestro Falletta’s 2007-08 season with the Buffalo Philharmonic will be a prolific recording period, with the Orchestra recording four CDs and releasing two new discs on the Naxos label, including a world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man, based on the poems of Bob Dylan, and the international release of a disc of the works of Ottorino Respighi. Falletta, who has established a reputation for conducting artistically important but seldom-heard works, is embarking on a multi-year recording project of the lost works of Marcel Tyberg, the brilliant Italian composer and Holocaust victim. The first release in this series will be Tyberg’s Symphony No. 3. Other works to be recorded this season include discs of the music of Franz Schubert and Richard Strauss, both on the Naxos label, and a Classical Christmas release on the Orchestra’s Beau Fleuve label. Continuing to raise the BPO’s national and international prominence, Ms. Falletta will once again lead the orchestra in a number of concerts to be broadcast nationally on NPR’s Performance Today and SymphonyCast, and international broadcasts through the European Broadcasting Union.
The Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s 2007-08 season will be highlighted by the inauguration of a series of concerts in two new venues: the Sandler Center in Virginia Beach, and the Center for Cultural Arts in Suffolk. These will supplement the VSO’s existing series at Chrysler Hall, Ferguson Center for the Arts, Regent University and St. Bede in Williamsburg, as part of the VSO’s and Falletta’s commitment to reach out to new audiences. For the first time in her tenure, Maestro Falletta will appear as guest soloist with the Orchestra, performing Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto in D Major. The season will see the release of two new recordings by the VSO: the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with Norman Krieger, and a disc-featuring violin soloist Michael Ludwig performing Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy and Massenet’s Meditation.
Ms. Falletta has been invited to guest conduct many of the world’s finest symphony orchestras. Highlights of her recent and upcoming guest conducting appearances include her debuts with the Orchestra National de Belgique, the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, the Dallas Symphony, the Orchestre National De Lyon, the Northwest German Philharmonic, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Lisbon Metropolitan Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony and the Seoul Philharmonic, and return engagements with the Seattle, Utah, San Antonio, Louisville and Colorado Symphony Orchestras, the Orchestra of Asturias (Spain), the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa (Japan) and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. She has guest conducted over 100 orchestras in North America. Highlights of her recent North American guest conducting appearances include the orchestras of Philadelphia, Montreal, San Francisco, Toronto, Edmonton, Quebec, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and St. Louis, and the National Symphony. Abroad she has appeared with the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, the Rotterdam Philharmonci, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Nurnberg Philharmonic, Orchestre de Bretagne, Orquestra Filarmonica de la UNAM, China’s National Symphony Orchestra, National Orchestra of Mexico, the orchestras of Dortmund, Capetown, Bilbao, Singapore, Tokyo Metropolitan, Wuppertal and Shanghai, and the Mannheim Orchestra. Ms. Falletta’s summer activities have taken her to numerous music festivals including Aspen, Tanglewood, Hollywood Bowl, Grand Teton, Wolf Trap, Eastern Music, Cabrillo, OK Mozart International, Lanaudiere, Peter Britt, Breckenridge and Interlochen, among others.
Ms. Falletta is the recipient of many of the most prestigious conducting awards, including the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award for exceptionally gifted American conductors, the coveted Stokowski Competition, and the Toscanini, Ditson and Bruno Walter Awards for conducting. She is an ardent champion of music of our time, introducing over 400 works by American composers, including more than 80 world premieres, and has received nine awards from ASCAP for creative programming, as well as the American Symphony Orchestra League’s prestigious John S. Edwards Award.
Both on and off the podium, Falletta is a dedicated advocate for her orchestras. She was named Buffalo’s most influential community leader, and Buffalo and Erie County’s Artist of the Year. During her tenure, the popular summer Artpark series has been reestablished, attendance and outreach activities have increased, and the BPO has regained its national prominence through recordings and broadcasts. The JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition has brought international acclaim and attention to the classical guitar, the Buffalo region, and the BPO. In 2006, Falletta was inducted into the Western New York Women’s Hall of Fame, and received the Human Relations Award from the Buffalo/Niagara Chapter of the American Jewish Committee. In 2007, Ms. Falletta was inducted into Norfolk’s Legends of Music Walk of Fame in recognition of her effect on the appreciation of classical music in Hampton Roads and Virginia.
Maestro Falletta’s growing discography, which includes over 40 titles, consists of recordings with the London Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Virginia Symphony, the English Chamber Orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony, the Long Beach Symphony, the Czech National Symphony, the Philadelphia Philharmonia and the Women’s Philharmonic, among others. In addition to her upcoming releases with the BPO and the VSO, Ms. Falletta’s current projects include her first recording with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for the Naxos label, featuring the violin concertos on Dohnanyi. Other upcoming releases for this season include a world premiere recording of the orchestral music of Kenneth Fuchs with the London Symphony to be released on the Naxos label, and a recording of the music of Paul Schoenfield with the Prague Philharmonia. This summer, the Virginia Arts Festival released Borrowed Treasures, Ms. Falletta’s third disc of chamber music for guitar, featuring Ms. Falletta as guitarist.
Together with English Horn soloist Thomas Stacy and the London Symphony Orchestra, Falletta received a 2006 Grammy nomination for Eventide (Concerto for English Horn, Percussion, Harp, Celesta and String Orchestra) by Kenneth Fuchs, from the CD An American Place (Naxos American Classics). Her 2005 recording of the music of Aaron Copland (Naxos) was given a 10/10 and hailed as a “wonderful disc” by Classics today, and her recording of Griffes Orchestral Music, also on the Naxos label with the Buffalo Philharmonic, was selected as an Editor’s Choice Recording by Gramophone. Other recent recordings include Burchfield Gallery, with music by Morton Gould and Jean Sibelius (BPO), Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, a recording of the Orchestra’s June 2004 performance in New York City, with music of Kodaly, Smetana and Zemlinsky, The American Cello, with the Virginia Symphony (Albany), Behzad Ranjbaran—Persian Trilogy, with the London Symphony (Delos), The Music of Frederick Converse (Naxos American Classics), and Pictures at a Gallery by the Buffalo Philharmonic (Beau Fleuve), John Powell’s Virginia Symphony, with the Virginia Symphony (Albany), The American Clarinet, with the Czech National Symphony (Albany), Schubert’s Guitar (Koch), featuring Ms. Falletta as guitarist and arranger, Impressions of French Music and Rhapsodie with the Buffalo Philharmonic, and Peter and the Wolf and the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, with the Virginia Symphony and celebrities from National Public Radio, released under the NPR label.
Ms. Falletta hasmade three recordings of works by women composers with the Women’s Philharmonic. Of special interest is her recording of works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger and Germaine Tailleferre, which received a “Best Classical Recording” award from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors and a “Most Creative Programming” award from Classic CD Magazine. Additional recordings feature music by Poulenc, Ravel, Moross, Shulamit Ran, Elinor Armer and John Luther Adams.
Maestro Falletta’s radio and television credits include numerous appearances on NPR’s Performance Today, Fresh Air and From the Top, WQXR, WNCN, CBS Sunday Morning, the Charlie Rose Show, the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour, BBC Radio, and several nationally televised performances on PBS, including Live from Lincoln Center—Juilliard at 80, Seasons of Life with Mark O’Connor and the BPO, and a special PBS TV documentary about music with Penn & Teller. As a writer, Ms. Falletta has contributed articles to Symphony Magazine, the New York Concert Review, the Virginian Pilot, Portfolio Magazine and Traffic East Magazine. Ms. Falletta’s first poetry book, Love Letters to Music, was published in the fall of 2004.
In addition to her current posts with the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony, Ms. Falletta has held the positions of artistic advisor to the Honolulu Symphony, music director of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, associate conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and music director of the Denver Chamber Orchestra, the Queens Philharmonic and the Women’s Philharmonic.
Ms. Falletta received her undergraduate degree from the Mannes School of Music in New York, and her master’s and doctorate degrees from The Juilliard School.
Maestro Falletta’s 2007-08 season with the Buffalo Philharmonic will be a prolific recording period, with the Orchestra recording four CDs and releasing two new discs on the Naxos label, including a world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man, based on the poems of Bob Dylan, and the international release of a disc of the works of Ottorino Respighi. Falletta, who has established a reputation for conducting artistically important but seldom-heard works, is embarking on a multi-year recording project of the lost works of Marcel Tyberg, the brilliant Italian composer and Holocaust victim. The first release in this series will be Tyberg’s Symphony No. 3. Other works to be recorded this season include discs of the music of Franz Schubert and Richard Strauss, both on the Naxos label, and a Classical Christmas release on the Orchestra’s Beau Fleuve label. Continuing to raise the BPO’s national and international prominence, Ms. Falletta will once again lead the orchestra in a number of concerts to be broadcast nationally on NPR’s Performance Today and SymphonyCast, and international broadcasts through the European Broadcasting Union.
The Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s 2007-08 season will be highlighted by the inauguration of a series of concerts in two new venues: the Sandler Center in Virginia Beach, and the Center for Cultural Arts in Suffolk. These will supplement the VSO’s existing series at Chrysler Hall, Ferguson Center for the Arts, Regent University and St. Bede in Williamsburg, as part of the VSO’s and Falletta’s commitment to reach out to new audiences. For the first time in her tenure, Maestro Falletta will appear as guest soloist with the Orchestra, performing Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto in D Major. The season will see the release of two new recordings by the VSO: the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with Norman Krieger, and a disc-featuring violin soloist Michael Ludwig performing Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy and Massenet’s Meditation.
Ms. Falletta has been invited to guest conduct many of the world’s finest symphony orchestras. Highlights of her recent and upcoming guest conducting appearances include her debuts with the Orchestra National de Belgique, the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, the Dallas Symphony, the Orchestre National De Lyon, the Northwest German Philharmonic, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Lisbon Metropolitan Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony and the Seoul Philharmonic, and return engagements with the Seattle, Utah, San Antonio, Louisville and Colorado Symphony Orchestras, the Orchestra of Asturias (Spain), the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa (Japan) and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. She has guest conducted over 100 orchestras in North America. Highlights of her recent North American guest conducting appearances include the orchestras of Philadelphia, Montreal, San Francisco, Toronto, Edmonton, Quebec, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and St. Louis, and the National Symphony. Abroad she has appeared with the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, the Rotterdam Philharmonci, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Nurnberg Philharmonic, Orchestre de Bretagne, Orquestra Filarmonica de la UNAM, China’s National Symphony Orchestra, National Orchestra of Mexico, the orchestras of Dortmund, Capetown, Bilbao, Singapore, Tokyo Metropolitan, Wuppertal and Shanghai, and the Mannheim Orchestra. Ms. Falletta’s summer activities have taken her to numerous music festivals including Aspen, Tanglewood, Hollywood Bowl, Grand Teton, Wolf Trap, Eastern Music, Cabrillo, OK Mozart International, Lanaudiere, Peter Britt, Breckenridge and Interlochen, among others.
Ms. Falletta is the recipient of many of the most prestigious conducting awards, including the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award for exceptionally gifted American conductors, the coveted Stokowski Competition, and the Toscanini, Ditson and Bruno Walter Awards for conducting. She is an ardent champion of music of our time, introducing over 400 works by American composers, including more than 80 world premieres, and has received nine awards from ASCAP for creative programming, as well as the American Symphony Orchestra League’s prestigious John S. Edwards Award.
Both on and off the podium, Falletta is a dedicated advocate for her orchestras. She was named Buffalo’s most influential community leader, and Buffalo and Erie County’s Artist of the Year. During her tenure, the popular summer Artpark series has been reestablished, attendance and outreach activities have increased, and the BPO has regained its national prominence through recordings and broadcasts. The JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition has brought international acclaim and attention to the classical guitar, the Buffalo region, and the BPO. In 2006, Falletta was inducted into the Western New York Women’s Hall of Fame, and received the Human Relations Award from the Buffalo/Niagara Chapter of the American Jewish Committee. In 2007, Ms. Falletta was inducted into Norfolk’s Legends of Music Walk of Fame in recognition of her effect on the appreciation of classical music in Hampton Roads and Virginia.
Maestro Falletta’s growing discography, which includes over 40 titles, consists of recordings with the London Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Virginia Symphony, the English Chamber Orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony, the Long Beach Symphony, the Czech National Symphony, the Philadelphia Philharmonia and the Women’s Philharmonic, among others. In addition to her upcoming releases with the BPO and the VSO, Ms. Falletta’s current projects include her first recording with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for the Naxos label, featuring the violin concertos on Dohnanyi. Other upcoming releases for this season include a world premiere recording of the orchestral music of Kenneth Fuchs with the London Symphony to be released on the Naxos label, and a recording of the music of Paul Schoenfield with the Prague Philharmonia. This summer, the Virginia Arts Festival released Borrowed Treasures, Ms. Falletta’s third disc of chamber music for guitar, featuring Ms. Falletta as guitarist.
Together with English Horn soloist Thomas Stacy and the London Symphony Orchestra, Falletta received a 2006 Grammy nomination for Eventide (Concerto for English Horn, Percussion, Harp, Celesta and String Orchestra) by Kenneth Fuchs, from the CD An American Place (Naxos American Classics). Her 2005 recording of the music of Aaron Copland (Naxos) was given a 10/10 and hailed as a “wonderful disc” by Classics today, and her recording of Griffes Orchestral Music, also on the Naxos label with the Buffalo Philharmonic, was selected as an Editor’s Choice Recording by Gramophone. Other recent recordings include Burchfield Gallery, with music by Morton Gould and Jean Sibelius (BPO), Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, a recording of the Orchestra’s June 2004 performance in New York City, with music of Kodaly, Smetana and Zemlinsky, The American Cello, with the Virginia Symphony (Albany), Behzad Ranjbaran—Persian Trilogy, with the London Symphony (Delos), The Music of Frederick Converse (Naxos American Classics), and Pictures at a Gallery by the Buffalo Philharmonic (Beau Fleuve), John Powell’s Virginia Symphony, with the Virginia Symphony (Albany), The American Clarinet, with the Czech National Symphony (Albany), Schubert’s Guitar (Koch), featuring Ms. Falletta as guitarist and arranger, Impressions of French Music and Rhapsodie with the Buffalo Philharmonic, and Peter and the Wolf and the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, with the Virginia Symphony and celebrities from National Public Radio, released under the NPR label.
Ms. Falletta hasmade three recordings of works by women composers with the Women’s Philharmonic. Of special interest is her recording of works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger and Germaine Tailleferre, which received a “Best Classical Recording” award from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors and a “Most Creative Programming” award from Classic CD Magazine. Additional recordings feature music by Poulenc, Ravel, Moross, Shulamit Ran, Elinor Armer and John Luther Adams.
Maestro Falletta’s radio and television credits include numerous appearances on NPR’s Performance Today, Fresh Air and From the Top, WQXR, WNCN, CBS Sunday Morning, the Charlie Rose Show, the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour, BBC Radio, and several nationally televised performances on PBS, including Live from Lincoln Center—Juilliard at 80, Seasons of Life with Mark O’Connor and the BPO, and a special PBS TV documentary about music with Penn & Teller. As a writer, Ms. Falletta has contributed articles to Symphony Magazine, the New York Concert Review, the Virginian Pilot, Portfolio Magazine and Traffic East Magazine. Ms. Falletta’s first poetry book, Love Letters to Music, was published in the fall of 2004.
In addition to her current posts with the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony, Ms. Falletta has held the positions of artistic advisor to the Honolulu Symphony, music director of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, associate conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and music director of the Denver Chamber Orchestra, the Queens Philharmonic and the Women’s Philharmonic.
Ms. Falletta received her undergraduate degree from the Mannes School of Music in New York, and her master’s and doctorate degrees from The Juilliard School.
