GRAMMY Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center, and Artistic Adviser of the Hawaii Symphony. Recently named as one of the 50 great conductors of all time by Gramophone magazine, she is hailed for her work as a conductor, recording artist, audience builder and champion of American composers.
As Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major American ensemble and has been credited with bringing the Philharmonic to an unprecedented level of national and international prominence. The Buffalo Philharmonic has become one of the leading recording orchestras for Naxos, with two GRAMMY Award-winning recordings. This season, the BPO performs at Carnegie Hall for a centennial celebration of former BPO Music Director Lukas Foss. The orchestra also travels to Florida for their fifth tour of the state under Falletta’s leadership.
In Summer 2022, Falletta made her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut at the Tanglewood Music Center. International highlights for 2022-23 include concerts in Spain, Sweden, Germany, and Croatia. Her recent and upcoming North American guest conducting includes the National Symphony, and the orchestras of Baltimore, Detroit, Nashville, Indianapolis, Houston, Toronto, and Milwaukee. Internationally, she has conducted many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia, and South America. In the past year, she has led the National Symphony in two PBS televised specials for New Year’s Eve and the 50th Anniversary of the Kennedy Center.
With a discography of over 120 titles, JoAnn is a leading recording artist for Naxos. She has won two individual GRAMMY Awards, including the 2021 GRAMMY Award for Best Choral Performance as Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic in the world premiere Naxos recording, Richard Danielpour’s “The Passion of Yeshua.” In 2019, she won her first individual GRAMMY Award as Conductor of the London Symphony in the Best Classical Compendium category for Spiritualist, her fifth world premiere recording of the music of Kenneth Fuchs. Her Naxos recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan with the BPO received two GRAMMY Awards in 2008, and her 2020 Naxos recording with the BPO of orchestral music of Florent Schmitt received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award.
Falletta is a member of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served by Presidential appointment as a Member of the National Council on the Arts during the Bush and Obama administrations. She has introduced over 500 works by American composers, including well over 100 world premieres. ASCAP has honored her as “a leading force for music of our time”. In 2019, JoAnn was named Performance Today’s first Classical Woman of The Year.
After earning her bachelor’s degree at Mannes, Falletta received master’s and doctoral degrees from The Juilliard School.
