The Iconic JoAnn Falletta, Music Director of Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Discusses Her Full Circle Journey
JoAnn Falletta. Credit: Heather Bellini.
JoAnn Falletta, the internationally acclaimed musical conductor, director, and ambassador, serves as the Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. A prolific recording artist for Naxos Records, she has led over 120 titles and received four GRAMMY Awards. Renowned as a “demonstrative, kinetic conductor” (The New York Times), Falletta has conducted over 100 orchestras across the world.
The Washington Post praised her as embodying “Toscanini's tight control over ensemble, Walter's affectionate balancing of inner voices and Stokowski's gutsy showmanship.”
She is also an advocate and mentor for women conductors, composers, and musicians, including her dedication to revisiting the life and legacy of Claudette Sorel.
JoAnn Falletta: From Queens to the Queen City
“I feel like I’ve come back full circle. I grew up in New York, and I live and work in New York–even if it’s the other side of the state. It’s all part of the larger journey.”
Falletta’s “larger journey” from her roots in Astoria, Queens to her current position as an internationally known conductor includes positions as musical director of the Denver Chamber Orchestra, associate director of Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, director of the Long Beach Symphony, music director of the Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic, and her long tenure as the eleventh music director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. In addition, she became the first American and the first female principal conductor of the Ulster Orchestra.
Upon her appointment at the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO), she became the first woman to lead a major American ensemble during her inaugural 1999-2000 season, and she has always championed and uplifted other women conductors, composers, and musicians.
JoAnn Falletta highlights former BPO musical director Lukas Foss (1961-1973) as an iconoclast and tastemaker: “Lucas found himself at the cutting edge of wild new music in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I think Buffalo was the epicenter of the new music world because of Lucas Foss. So I inherited an orchestra that was partly trained in the European sound, but also having the advantage of American music directors like MTT [Michael Tilson Thomas (1971-1979)] and Lukas doing new music. The Buffalo audience is open to experimentation.”
Buffalo is often dismissed as a rust belt city, with its lake effect blizzards, postindustrial emptied warehouses, and the crushing defeats of its beloved professional sports teams. In recent years, however, the population has started to increase due to both nascent medical and startup industries and an influx of immigrants, adding to its long history of international cultures.
“The city has always retained this character that may seem at odds with heavy industries, but they've always loved the arts,” Falletta says. “We have two great art museums. We have a lot of theatres in Buffalo. We have incredible architectural masterpieces by Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan,” she shares about the cultural scene of the Queen City. (She also notes that because of the Cheerios factory the city smells deliciously like breakfast.)
“And we have had the Buffalo Philharmonic since 1940. We are an orchestra that has a big personality, a vibrant connection to its audience and the lovely Kleinhans Music Hall, one of the best in the country. So that's been very important to the people of Buffalo to have their own orchestra, their own musical identity, and they consider themselves a city that's very invested in culture.”
During her twenty years at the BPO, Falletta has been credited with bringing the Philharmonic to a new level of national and international prominence. Falletta, however, mostly speaks in the first-person plural, connecting the BPO’s past, present, and future, and including all of her musicians and colleagues in the success of the orchestra.
This prestige includes a wildly prolific recording contract with Naxos Records, who asked Falletta to move beyond Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven to record unknown gems of classical music.
“That was quite a journey to become a kind of detective finding these pieces that we subsequently recorded. It was the ideal situation for me, because we were able to sort of create a kind of environment in Buffalo that was very active, very intense, and very experimental.”
Embracing newer and lesser-known works paid off when Falletta and the BPO won two GRAMMYS in 2009 for “Best Classical Performance” and “Best Classical Composition” for John Corigliano: Mr. Tambourine Man - Seven Poems of Bob Dylan. (Last year, the BPO received another Grammy for their recording of The Passion Of Yeshua composed by Falletta’s lifelong friend Richard Danielpour.)
“Mr. Tambourine Man is a wildly avant garde piece, which I absolutely love,” she explains. “I don't know if it can be played on the radio. It's just too wild.”
Even during the pandemic, the BPO continued filming their concerts–adapted with smaller groups and different repertoires–for at-home audiences. Falletta found the pivoting to be artistically challenging and inspiring.
“But now we're planning a season for what we hope is going to be a more normal time.”
The 2022-2023 season at the BPO is inspired, in part, by one of her predecessors at the BPO, Lukas Foss. “We are celebrating the birthday of our former music director, because he would have been 100, and he was so pivotal in the development of the Buffalo Philharmonic.” Both Foss and Falletta are kindred spirits in their adventurous programming of contemporary composers.
Special commissions include José Lezcano’s Concerto for Two Double Basses, written especially for BPO principal bassists Daniel Pendley and Brett Shurtliffe and a new work by Jessie Montgomery. Guest artists will include violinist Midori, former BPO Music Director Maximiano Valdés joined by Paul Huang, jazz violinist Regina Carter, and the BPO Pop series will be headlined by seven-time GRAMMY Award-winning Gladys Knight. There are internationally renowned guest conductors and artists set to grace the stage, and many collaborations with Buffalo’s local theatres and universities.
Paving the Way for Women Conductors
When JoAnn Falletta’s name appears in articles and in print, there is often the qualifying phrase that she is the “first woman” to conduct this or that orchestra. This says volumes about the state of women in musical directorship roles. In September 2021, The New York Times lamented that only about 9 percent of music directors were women as of 2016.
“I have to say that when I was getting into this, l didn't realize that women conductors were not common. My family were not professional musicians,” Falletta shares.
She admits that even some of her instructors tried to dissuade her from pursuing conducting: “They told me gently that they weren't sure that a woman could have a reasonable professional life as an orchestral conductor because no one had actually done that.” She remains grateful for her time and training at both Mannes College of Music, where she switched her major from classical guitar to conducting, and her graduate studies at Juilliard where she earned her doctorate degree. She praises these programs for allowing her to create her own path. Falletta also credits early 20th century women conductors like Antonia Brico and Sarah Caldwell for inspiring her as well as the impact of the Women’s Movement, which she saw all around her every day. “Women were bank presidents, politicians, and certainly doctors and lawyers, why not conductors?”
During her ten years as the musical director of Bay Area Women's Philharmonic (later the Women's Philharmonic), Falletta’s classical canon exploded as she directed the works of women composers, working closely with such luminaries as Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, and Joan Tower. “I learned a lot about women writing music,” she admits of her time in San Francisco.
After Falletta broke through the glass ceiling of conducting, she used her position to advocate for and mentor other women in the field of classical music. As much as this is her vocation, she notes that the field is dogmatically traditional and slow to change. “We still don't see enough women composers on everyone's orchestral programs. There still aren’t enough women conductors. But I think it's changing now, and that's the good news.”
Rediscovering Claudette Sorel
One of Falletta’s favorite recent projects is the release of Claudette Sorel Rediscovered (Sorel Classics, released in October 2021). The project is a labor of love for Falletta, honoring her mentor and friend Claudette Sorel (1932-1999). Falletta was a founding member of the Sorel Organization’s Advisory Board in the 1990s, and is a current Trustee.
Falletta points out that while Sorel played over 2,000 concerts, either with an orchestra or solo recitals during her most active years from the 1950s-70s, she is all but unknown today. Born in France in 1932, her family emigrated to the United States when she was eight years old to support her prodigious talents; two years later Sorel made her recital debut performance at the Town Hall in Manhattan, followed by her debut with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall at 11 years old.
In addition to her “astonishing talent,” Falletta admired Sorel as “an adventurer.” “She was always looking for new music, which wasn't really that common in those days. She loved new music, and especially American composers,” Falletta notes. “She's an inspiration for me, when I'm thinking about trying to find new voices, to know that she was doing it.”
After a debilitating fall on a patch of ice in the 1970s, Sorel retired from professional playing and recording. She chaired the piano department at SUNY Fredonia, where they honor her memory with an annual piano competition and fellowship. Sorel became an advocate for women pianists, and then expanded her attention to women conductors and composers.
Sorel contacted Falletta, who was in her nascent career as a conductor, and invited her to join her advisory board of The Elizabeth & Michel Sorel Charitable Organization (named after her parents). The Sorel Organization describes its mission as “expanding opportunities and stretching the boundaries for women musicians in the fields of conducting, composition, film scoring, performance, arts leadership, education, and scholarship.”
“I was dazzled by her energy,” Falletta continues. “Although she was the most petite woman, only five-foot-one, she was larger than life. But when you listen to her two recordings which we've just released, you’ll hear that she was a powerhouse, a force of nature.”
The same can be said of Falletta, a trailblazer in her own right, bigger than life when she’s on her podium, but in conversation, she is gracious, generous, and remains humble about her journey.
A lot of luck
Asked for her advice for the next generation of classical conductors and composers, she says that she has achieved her monumental achievements with “a lot of luck.” She states that conducting and composing are “life commitments.”
“There will be ups and downs and challenges, but you live in a world of great beauty. If you dream of it, go full force ahead, keep an open mind about new things, and be good to the people that you work with. It’s a small music world out there.”
Disclaimer: The writer is from the Buffalo, New York area originally.
