Conductor JoAnn Falletta Talks Career, Legacy, and Advice

We caught up with the legendary conductor shortly after she received the Dallas Symphony's Award of Excellence at the 2024 Women in Classical Music Symposium

 

Multi-GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center, and Conductor Laureate of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. As Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra.

This year, at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's Women in Classical Music Symposium, Falletta was given the Award of Excellence —which recognizes a woman in the field who has paved the way for others and is investing in the future of the industry.

Falletta will return to Dallas in March 2025 to lead the DSO and the Dallas Symphony Chorus in concerts during the American Choral Director’s Conference.

We sat down with the conductor to get an in-depth look into her life and ask for her expert advice.

 

Congratulations on receiving the Award of Excellence! How does it feel to get the award?

I feel very special because I've admired the Dallas Symphony for years.

When the Women in Classical Music Symposium first started, it was an amazing idea! They may have been one of the first to codify it and say, “We want to work with women conductors, help them, and serve as a central place for them.” I feel very honored to be part of it in that way.

 

Is there a highlight of your career that you could pinpoint? 

It's hard to say, but I think it's every time I've been to Carnegie Hall with my orchestra — the first time with the Virginia Symphony, then a few times with the Buffalo Philharmonic. There's always feeling of, "Okay, we have come to the top of the mountain and we did it together."

 

Congrats on 25 years with the Buffalo Philharmonic. What has the ensemble meant to you and your career?

It's been the most transformative years of my life and it's also been the kind of orchestra that allowed me to grow as a musician. Hopefully, a conductor is growing all the time and learning as they go. But who teaches you? Your musicians. They may not do it in words, (although sometimes they do) but in how they play. They are constantly giving you a lot of information and feedback.

In Buffalo, over the 25 years, I've had the chance to welcome many new people to the industry. It’s been a joy to shape the orchestra so that new artists come into our village, our family, and get the opportunity to learn our sound and our way of making music.

It's been beautiful and we have done something truly special together.

 

You’ve helped commission and premiered countless new works in your career. Why do you prioritize this — specifically for female composers?

This goes back to my early days of conducting when I led an orchestra called the Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco. Every instrument was played by a woman, and at that time, it was kind of hard to find a woman playing tuba and bass trombone, but we'd had them, and they were great.

We played only works by women, which meant that we did a few classics like the Amy Beach Symphony and the Fanny Mendelssohn Overture, but most of the time we played new works. We had composers come, often hearing their orchestral work for the first time, and I realized how important it was to all of us. We felt like we were doing something that was going to stick. I think that changed my whole perception of new music.

 

How did you become connected with the Women’s Philharmonic?

They were looking for a woman conductor and there weren't very many of us then. When they first called me, I was working with the Milwaukee Symphony as their associate conductor and I was still in school at Juilliard.

They said, “We'd like you to come out and do a concert with us, but we only play music by women.” This is embarrassing, but I said to their wonderful executive director, “What music by women?”

All my life, I had just studied everything they taught you in school — from Bach to Mozart, all the way up to the 20th century. And they were all men. Luckily, she didn't hang up the phone and I went and conducted the Beach Symphony for the first time.

After that, I was totally hooked. I spent over 10 years with them and it was a great part of my life. Not only did I learn how to learn new music — how to develop your own interpretation without a set performance practice —  but I also learned that we were giving new repertoire to the world. This became a mission for us and I feel really that that was a transformative time of my life.

 

For young female conductors, what advice do you give them to succeed as a conductor in our industry?

You have to be true to who you are. Everyone has this image of the "snooty" male conductor walking up to the podium wearing a cape, refusing to talk to anyone. That's not the way it is. You have a lot of authority when you’re on the podium, of course, since you have to coalesce 90 very gifted musicians, and somehow you have to find a way to get everyone on the same page.

But, you have to do that while also being genuine. Some conductors are just funny and that's great, use that! Some conductors are very spiritual, etc. Don't ever pretend to be somebody else.

Also, you have to study, study study. You never really know the pieces well enough. Even André Previn said that every time he studies a score, he doesn't know it, but he gets a little closer to it.

And that's how I feel as well – every time I study a piece, I see something new in it. The musicians help me make those discoveries as well. It's like a path that's always unraveling before you.

 

How important is mentoring the younger generations for you? If a young conductor wants to find a mentor, what would you say would be their first step?

Make contact with someone that you know, even if you may not know them personally. We are all connected through one person or another in this industry, so find someone to make an introduction for you, or just reach out!

Sometimes people just want to have a phone conversation, and I'm happy to talk. Sometimes it's more in-depth, like a female conductor having a problem with her board or a problem with a key player in the orchestra and just needs to talk it through. I often get asked, “How can I deal with this? Have you ever had this experience?” For those of us with experience, I think it's important we share what we've learned.

Also, things like the Dallas Symphony Women in Classical Music Symposium are very important. In Buffalo, we recently had a Conductor's Guild three-day masterclass for exclusively women conductors. There were eight talented women there in a very supportive environment. I would suggest looking for things like that where you can be honest and open.

There are so many mentors, and I'm talking about men too, who are completely open to women on the podium and can offer help. But women, specifically, can sometimes share with you things they did that maybe undermined what they wanted to do. For example, you’ve probably heard someone say that men shouting at the orchestra is perceived in one way, and women shouting at anybody is perceived in another way. Is that fair? Probably not, but that’s the way it is. So we need to work on changing our world while also making the best of the current situation.

 

What is your best advice to a younger conductor just starting to guest conduct around the country or globe?

Approach the orchestra with respect and joy — and that doesn't mean being silly — but give them the feeling that you're happy to be there. Like all of us, orchestras like to be acknowledged as something special.

Again, just be yourself, because that sincerity is so evident when you're on the podium.

I always tell people don't anticipate a negative experience, because you can manufacture that. During my first guest conducting (you can imagine how important and terrifying this was to me), all I could think about was, “Do they like me?” Specifically, the oboist looked like he didn't want to be there. He was angrily turning the pages of his part and staring at the floor at all times when he wasn't playing. He looked absolutely disgusted. I thought, “Well, I guess there's someone who doesn't agree that a woman should be conducting.” I got so agitated that I really couldn't work.

We had our break and I saw him coming up to talk to me. He said, “Maestro,  I'm so sorry. I was really looking forward to playing for you and I can't get my reed to work. I'm so upset that I can't be what I wanted to be for you.”

After that, I told myself that I was never going to let this happen again, I'm never going to imagine the worst. That was a big turning point in my life.

Just imagine that they're all happy to play for you. Is it going to be true for 100 percent of the orchestra? No. But, if you react in a welcoming, supportive way, that's going to win over 98% of the orchestra.

There was another time I was auditioning for an orchestra, and one of the older male players in the woodwind section said to me, “I wish I had died before women were on the podium.” I was taken aback, because what a ridiculous thing to say.  You have to have a sense of humor too and not take everything like life and death.

 

When performing canonical repertoire, has a concertmaster ever given a strong resistance to the style you wanted to convey? How did you deal with that?

I have one that sticks in my mind. I was conducting in Germany and doing Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. We came to a spot in the cello section that I wanted to take in a more urgent tempo and they played it very slowly. We all looked at each other in surprise and tried it again. And again, they played it very slowly. They looked at me and said, “Well, this is how it goes.”

Then I realized that they had always, probably for 120 years, played it in that tempo. I didn’t like it myself, I like it to be more anguished and urgent, but I realized I could start at that tempo and then gradually move faster. I decided to let the orchestra inform the performance.

Essentially, every orchestra is different. They have their own personality, history, and character. They have different ways of learning and different contexts for each piece. You need to respect that. The performance will become a sort of hybrid of you and them, and it can't be just about you.

 

It sounds like you have a very collaborative approach to working with an orchestra. Can you elaborate?

Every time we play a piece, it's never quite the same as the last time. And that's the wonderful thing about music. It's fluid. It can be wonderful in so many ways. So, why not be collaborative?

In orchestras, you have so much talent in front of you. When I was younger, I would be terrified of this because there are 90 musicians, and they've all been playing since they were four or five years old. They've had thousands of music lessons and they’ve practiced for hundreds of thousands of hours. These are experts, so what was I doing there?

But now, I try to think of my role as helping them flourish even further. I started to think about myself as creating a landscape where they could be great. I want to help them bloom like flowers in a garden.

 

We have noticed that most women conductors wear pants nowadays. Did you ever feel pressure to dress a certain way for concerts, especially when you were younger?

Maybe decades ago, this was a very big question: What does a woman conductor wear? When I started first, I would usually wear a black skirt and a black jacket. Then I realized that I was not much of a skirt wearer, and I started to wear what I normally would, which was a black suit.

There were some instances when I went to Europe, where I would get a message from the management asking me to not wear pants. They felt their audiences would feel that you were trying to be a man, but this was a while ago.

When I conducted my first concert with the Milwaukee Symphony, I wore my black suit. The very next morning, all of the female musicians came into my office and said they wanted to wear black pants now too. Before that, they had to wear skirts, but they said "If our conductor can wear black pants, we should be able to too!”

It was a little controversial back then, but now I just tell women to wear something comfortable that you don't have to think about. If it's a complicated outfit, do not wear it on the podium. Don't wear the hair clip that will constantly fall out.

However, I think if there are some who feel completely comfortable in a gown, why not?

 

Besides conducting, even outside of the musical realm, what do you enjoy doing that keeps you grounded in your busy schedule?

I travel a lot and always try to visit places where people live in that town, instead of the big tourist things. It makes you realize a beautiful thing: people are wonderful. These days, we get this feeling that people are at each other's throats. But I don’t think so. Everyone has some kind of humanity in them.

I also practice yoga, read, and go for long walks — all things to decompress.

 

What do you want your legacy to be?

Personally, I would like the orchestras that I've worked with to know how much I value the musicians. It's because of the people that my life has been so happy.

 

(PC: Cheryl Gorski)