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JoAnn Falletta Conductor Full Length Biography Multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta is Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, 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 Orchestra. Gramophone has recognized her among the “Fifty Great Conductors” of all time, while The Washington Post has praised her artistry for combining “Toscanini’s tight control over ensemble, Walter’s affectionate balancing of inner voices, Stokowski’s gutsy showmanship, and a controlled frenzy worthy of Bernstein.”
Internationally, she has conducted such distinguished ensembles as the London Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre National de Belgique, Manchester BBC Philharmonic, RTE Concert Orchestra (Dublin), Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, Orquesta Sinfónica de Radio Televisión Española, Residentie Orkest, and orchestras throughout Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Asian engagements include appearances with the Korean Broadcast Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, China National Symphony and the symphonies of Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore and Guangzhou. Her 1999 appointment as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, making her the first woman music director of a major American orchestra, is one of the high points in a career of many firsts. In 1989, she was the first woman to become music director of an American regional orchestra when she took the position with the Long Beach Symphony in California. From 2011-14, she served as Principal Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra—the first woman and the first American to fill this post. In 2018, she was the first American woman conductor to lead an orchestra at the Beethoven Easter Festival in Poland, and in 1992, she became the first woman to conduct Germany's historic Mannheim Orchestra. Falletta has conducted over 1,700 orchestral works by 650 composers with 200 premieres, including over 135 works by more than 70 women composers. A champion of contemporary composers she has recorded the works of Kenneth Fuchs, Adolphus Hailstork, Richard Danielpour, Miguel del Aguila, Daron Hagen, Danny Elfman, Behzad Ranjbaran, Robert Paterson, Eric Ewazen, Jaako Kuusisto, Michael Daugherty, Paul Moravec, Wang Jie, Randall Svane, Russell Platt, Caroline Mallonee and Rob Deemer. ASCAP has honored her as “a leading force for music of our time”. 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.” Falletta has won a number of conducting awards and competitions, including the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award, the Bruno Walter Conducting Award, the Stokowski Competition, the Toscanini Award, the Ditson Conductor's Award for the Advancement of American Music and the American Symphony Orchestra League’s John S. Edwards Award. Falletta is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded 13 honorary doctorates from universities in the states of New York, Virginia, Wisconsin and Tennessee and by presidential appointment served on the National Council on the Arts in the Bush and Obama administrations.
Her complete discography consists of over 135 titles, which in addition to the Buffalo Philharmonic, includes recordings with the London Symphony, the Czech Philharmonic, the Ulster Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Symphony, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, The New Zealand Symphony, the Prague Philharmonia, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Symphony, the Women’s Philharmonic, Long Beach Symphony and the National Orchestral Institute Orchestra. Her Grammy Award winning discs include the BPO’s 2021 Grammy Award 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 with the BPO for the recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan in addition to Best Orchestral Performance Grammy nominations in 2024 (Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and Symphony No. 2), in 2025 (music of Kodaly) and a 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 premier recordings of the music of Michael Daugherty, Paul Moravec and Robert Paterson.
Western New York honors include entry to the Western New York’s Women Hall of Fame, National Human Relations Award from the American Jewish Committee Buffalo/Niagara Chapter, Red Jacket award from the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, Exemplary Citizenship Award from the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site Foundation, Endowment Leadership Award from The Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies, Buffalo Music Hall of Fame, the University of Buffalo’s Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal, 61st Annual Citation award from The National Federation for Just Communities of Western New York, Honorary Medallion of Distinction from the State University of New York, Charles Burchfield Award from the Burchfield Penney Museum, Athena Leadership Award, the Renaissance award, Buffalo Business First Hall of Fame and named Buffalo’s most influential community leader by the Buffalo News. In Virginia, where she served as Music Director of the Virginia Symphony for 29 seasons, she is the only classical artist to have a star on Norfolk’s Legends of Music Walk of Fame. Other awards include the Virginia Women in History Award, Norfolk’s Downtowner of the Year, the 50 for 50 Arts Inspiration Award from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the Virginia Arts Festival’s Ovation Award in recognition of her significant impact on the arts in Hampton Roads. Recalling her lessons from conducting greats Leonard Bernstein, Jorge Mester, and Sixten Ehrling, her inspired leadership extends well beyond the podium. She has been championing women conductors, composers, and musicians for decades. Most recently, she was honored by MOLA, the association of orchestra librarians with their Eroica Award for outstanding service to music, received the Dallas Symphony’s Award of Excellence and the International Conductor’s Guild Max Rudolf Award for outstanding achievement as a conductor and pedagogue.
A short documentary about Falletta’s career, Maestro JoAnn Falletta - Symphony Trailblazer by filmmaker Brenda Feldstein, received a 2025 New York Emmy. Ms. Feldstein’s feature-length film, Love Letters to Music, expanding on the award-winning short, is scheduled to be released in late 2026. The title is inspired by Falletta’s collection of more than 100 poems written by her throughout her career, published in November 2025. 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. She received her undergraduate degree from the Mannes School of Music, and her master’s and doctorate degrees from The Juilliard School. When not on the podium, JoAnn enjoys playing classical guitar, writing, cycling, yoga and is an avid reader. JoAnn Falletta Conductor Condensed Biography 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. Gramophone Magazine has recognized her among the “Fifty Great Conductors” of all time, and ASCAP has hailed her as “a leading force for music of our time”.
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 (Sciabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and Symphony No. 2) and 2025 (music of Kodaly) and a 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.
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 premier 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. In 2019, 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. Devoted to assisting the next generation of conductors and orchestra musicians she has guest conducted at premier conservatories and programs including Juilliard, Curtis, Cleveland Institute of Music, Indiana University, the Manhattan School, Mannes, the Colburn School, the Orchestra Now at Bard College, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the National Repertory Orchestra, Tanglewood, the National Orchestral Institute and Interlochen and a partnership between the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Mannes College of Music providing opportunities for emerging conductors to gain professional orchestral experience. The Buffalo Philharmonic associate and assistant conductors she has mentored have gone on to music director positions with such orchestras such as the Boise, Springfield (MO), Augusta, Spartanburg and Fayetteville symphonies and the Louisiana Philharmonic. 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.
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