Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra located in Buffalo, New York led by Music Director JoAnn Falletta. Its primary performing venue is Kleinhans Music Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark. Each season it presents over 120 classical series, pops, rock, youth, and family concerts. During the summer months, the orchestra performs at parks and outdoor venues across Western New York.

The orchestra was founded by Cameron Baird, Frederick Slee, and Samuel P. Capen in 1934. Past music directors of the Philharmonic include William Steinberg, Josef Krips, Willis Page, Lukas Foss, Michael Tilson Thomas, Semyon Bychkov, and Maximiano Valdés. The current music director is JoAnn Falletta, the orchestra’s first female music director. John Morris Russell is the Principal Pops Conductor. Other celebrated conductors who have led the orchestra include Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir Neville Marriner, and Henry Mancini. Previous pops conductors include Doc Severinsen, the resident pops conductor in the 1990s, and Marvin Hamlisch, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, A Chorus Line.

The orchestra has recorded extensively. Under Steinberg, the BPO released a critically acclaimed first commercial recording: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony. Under Falletta’s directorship, the BPO’s recording program has focused on American composers for the Naxos label, including Frederick Converse, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, and contemporary compositions, including the first commercial recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man which received two GRAMMY Awards in 2009. The orchestra won another GRAMMY in 2021 for its recording of Richard Danielpour’s “The Passion of Yeshua.” She also founded a house label, Beau Fleuve, on which the orchestra has released many discs including “Built For Buffalo,” featuring commissioned works, and “Carnivals and Fairy Tales,” a children’s album narrated by Falletta and Robby Takac of the Goo Goo Dolls. The orchestra can also be heard in the soundtrack to Woody Allen’s Manhattan.

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