JoAnn Falletta

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JoAnn Falletta (born February 27, 1954, in Queens, New York City) is an American classical musician and an award-winning orchestral conductor.

She was educated at the Mannes College of Music and The Juilliard School in New York City. She began her musical career as a virtuoso guitar and mandolin player, and as a teenager often was called to perform with the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic when a work called for a mandolin or guitar obligato. She entered Mannes as a guitar student, but began conducting the student orchestra at age 18, and desired a career in this field right away. While the Mannes administration raised doubts about the ability of a woman to gain a music directorship, i it agreed and permitted her transfer her emphasis. After graduation, she did further study to Queens College (M.A. in orchestral conducting) and the Juilliard School of Music (M.M., D.M.A. in orchestral conducting). She studied conducting with Jorge Mester and others.

Ms. Falletta has won a number of prestigious conducting awards, including the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award for exceptionally gifted American conductors, the coveted Stokowski Competition, the Toscanini Award, Ditson Award and Bruno Walter Award for conducting. She has also has received nine awards from ASCAP for creative programming, as well as the American Symphony Orchestra League’s prestigious John S. Edwards Award.

She has guest conducted a number of orchestras. Overseas the list includes the Orchestra National de Belgique, the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, the Orchestre National De Lyon, the Northwest German Philharmonic, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Lisbon Metropolitan Symphony, the the Seoul Philharmonic, the Orchestra of Asturias (Spain), the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa (Japan), and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. In North America she has guest conducted over 100 orchestras, including the orchestras of Philadelphia, Montreal, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Detroit, St. Louis, Louisville, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Dallas, Seattle, Utah, and Indianapolis, and the National Symphony.

Falletta currently is serving as the Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony orchestras.

In 1998, Falletta was named music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.^[1] Although the 1998 appointment made her the first woman to lead a major American orchestra, The New York Times and other media have given this honor to Marin Alsop with her 2005 appointment as music director of the Baltimore Symphony.^[1] In 2002 Falletta won the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award.^[2]