JoAnn Falletta

Multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta is Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony, Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Omaha Symphony, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center, and Conductor Laureate of the Hawaii Symphony. She is recognized by Gramophone Magazine as one of the “Fifty Great Conductors” of all time, and by ASCAP as “a leading force for music of our time.”

As Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra. She has overseen one of the orchestra’s most productive recording and touring eras, bringing the Philharmonic to an unprecedented level of national and international prominence. The Buffalo Philharmonic has released more than thirty-five recordings on the Naxos label and an extensive catalog on its own Beau Fleuve label. The BPO is ranked as one of the top five orchestras of CD releases on international labels.

JoAnn Falletta has led the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on major international and US tours, highlighted by their historic 2018 tour to Poland, where the BPO became the first American orchestra to perform at the prestigious Beethoven Festival in Warsaw, as well as six concert tours of Florida and three performances at Carnegie Hall.

Falletta’s guest conducting career has taken her to many of the world’s leading orchestras, including over a hundred orchestras in North America across 48 states, Canada and Mexico. Internationally, she has conducted many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia, and South America, including recent and upcoming concerts in France, England, Spain, China, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Brazil, Croatia and Mexico, North American concerts with the orchestras of Dallas, Boston, Baltimore, Detroit, Omaha, Indianapolis, Houston, Calgary, Vancouver, Tulsa, Charleston, Nashville, Puerto Rico and Rochester and at premier conservatories and summer festivals. She has conducted over 1,700 orchestral works by 650 composers with 200 premieres, including over 135 works by more than 70 women composers.

Falletta’s complete discography consists of over 135 titles. Her GRAMMY-Award winning albums include the 2021 GRAMMY Award with the BPO in the Best Choral Performance category for Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua, the 2019 GRAMMY Award with The London Symphony in the Best Classical Compendium category for the music of Kenneth Fuchs and two GRAMMY Awards in 2008 for the recording with the BPO of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan. Her recordings received a Best Orchestral Performance GRAMMY nomination in 2024 (Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and Symphony No. 2) and 2025 (music of Kodaly) and 2025 Best Classical Compendium nomination for the music of Lukas Foss. The BPO’s 2020 Naxos recording of the orchestral music of Florent Schmitt received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award.

Recent releases with the BPO included The French in Spain (Ravel, Ibert and Debussy), which received a Gramophone CD of the month, Stravinsky Fairy Tales, A Hero’s Life including music of Strauss and the premiere recording of Behzad Ranjbaran’s violin concerto with Nikki Chooi, Beethoven/Hagen, celebrating the BPO’s 90th anniversary, pairing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the world premiere recording of Daron Hagen’s City of Light, the music of Danny Elfman with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic on Sony, Contemporary Landscapes, with four works commissioned by the BPO by American composers Kenneth Fuchs, Russell Platt, Randall Svane and Wang Jie, and The Golden Age of the Horn, a disc of concertos for two horns, featuring the principal and associate principal horns of the BPO.

Upcoming recordings on Naxos include Symphonic Dances (Bartok, Copland and Hindemith), Richard Danielpour’s Francis Oratorio, The Spanish in Paris (Falla, Turina and Granadas), and on the Beau Fleuve label, American Soundscapes featuring world premiere recordings of the music of Michael Daugherty, Paul Moravec and Robert Paterson.

Falletta is a member of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has served by presidential appointment as a Member of the National Council on the Arts during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations and is the recipient of many of the most prestigious conducting awards. JoAnn was named Performance Today’s first Classical Woman of The Year, calling her a “tireless champion,” and lauding her “unique combination of artistic authority and compassion, compelling musicianship and humanity.” A documentary about Falletta’s career, Maestro JoAnn Falletta - Symphony Trailblazer by filmmaker Brenda Feldstein, received a 2025 New York Emmy. A feature-length film is scheduled to be released in late 2026.

Falletta has held the positions of Principal Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Phoenix Symphony, Music Director of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Denver Chamber Orchestra and The Women’s Philharmonic.

After earning her bachelor’s degree at Mannes, Falletta received master’s and doctoral degrees from The Juilliard School. When not on the podium, JoAnn enjoys playing classical guitar, writing, cycling, yoga and is an avid reader.

For more information, visit www.joannfalletta.com