JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Photo by Robert Muller.
In Sunday’s (10/22) Buffalo News (NY), Tim O’Shei writes, “When you’re the musical director and conductor of a major symphony—which is JoAnn Falletta’s position with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—the honorific ‘maestro’ comes with the job…. But please, if you see her out somewhere, like a grocery store or theater or movie, just call her JoAnn. ‘I love the way that people always call me by my first name,’ Falletta said … Falletta’s form on a conductor’s podium … has been photographed and designed onto posters and billboards for a quarter-century. She’s well-known far beyond Buffalo: Falletta and the BPO have won Grammy awards for their classical music recordings, and she travels the country and world as a guest conductor for other orchestras. But for 25 years, Buffalo and its own philharmonic have been home for Falletta … Falletta: Because we’re a middle-sized orchestra, we’re small enough to be flexible … But we’re big enough that … if we want Yo-Yo Ma to come, we can get him to come. We’re really in a good place, sizewise, where we can be creative, we can be risk-taking, but we can also get the very best musicians here. They really are spectacular.”
