JoAnn Falletta Will Conduct Three World Premiere Performances With the Buffalo Philharmonic

The Buffalo Philharmonic, led by JoAnn Falletta, will perform three world premieres commissioned by the orchestra this Spring at Kleinhans Hall in Buffalo, New York. Kenneth Fuchs's Point of Tranquility (Sat. Mar. 19 & Sun. Mar. 20), inspired by abstract expressionism; Russell Platt's Symphony in Three Movements (For Clyfford Still), (Sat. Apr. 23 & Sun. Apr. 24), a musical interpretation of abstract impressionist works by Still that hang in Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery; and Wang Jie's The Winter that United Us (Sat. June 11). The BPO opened the season in September with the world premiere of Daren Hagen's Bandanna Overture.

Falletta, who has garnered international praise as an advocate of new and lesser-known music, has introduced over five hundred works by American composers, including well over 100 world premieres. (Insert quote from JoAnn about the importance of commissioning new works, adding to the orchestral repertoire).

Falletta and composer Kenneth Fuchs have made five highly acclaimed world premiere recordings together, including the 2019 Grammy Award winning album, Fuchs: Piano Concerto 'Spiritualist'; Poems of Life; Glacier, Rush. Says Fuchs about the March premiere of his latest work Point of Tranquility, "I am thrilled about the forthcoming premiere Point of Tranquility with the Buffalo Philharmonic. I composed this work as a tribute to this superb ensemble of brilliant musicians and in honor of the sustained friendship that JoAnn Falletta and I have shared in music since our student days together at Juilliard."

Russel Platt's Symphony in Three Movements (For Clyfford Still) is a response to four paintings by the legendary Abstract Expressionist artist held by Buffalo's esteemed Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Platt notes that "When most people hear the name of Buffalo, New York, their thoughts probably wander to a storied football team and to seasons of formidable winter weather. For me, Buffalo is a city about art and labor - the hundreds of thousands of hardworking people who have populated and propelled the town over the decades, through thick and thin, and about the arts that their representatives have woven into its civic culture. My new work, "Symphony in Three Movements (For Clyfford Still)," will celebrate both the steadfast spirit of Still's vibrant Abstract Expressionist paintings and the resilience of the citizens who sustain both the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which has one of the world's most renowned collections of Still's work."

Wang Jie's The Winter that United Us will open the BPO's gala season finale concert on June 11, to be followed by legendary soprano, Renee Fleming performing Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs. Jie's work was composed as a gift for Kleinhans Music Hall and the BPO, celebrating the city of Buffalo. The composer, whose Symphony No 1 was performed by the BPO in 2018, says: "As I compose this new symphony, I keep returning to the happy memory of 2018, of being in Buffalo with JoAnn, with the BPO's incredible musicians and audience. My heart warms as if spring were just around the corner, the much-needed spring in all of our hearts, as we brave the cutting tragedy of the last two years. I can't wait to share this symphony with all of you."

Multiple Grammy-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center and Artistic Adviser to the Hawaii Symphony. As Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major America ensemble. This year she was named as one of the fifty great conductors past and present by Gramophone Magazine. With a discography of almost 120 titles, Falletta is a leading recording artist for Naxos. She has won two individual Grammy Awards, including the 2021 GRAMMY Award for Best Choral Performance as conductor of the world premiere Naxos recording, Richard Danielpour's "The Passion of Yeshua." In 2019, she won a Grammy Award as conductor of the London Symphony in the Best Classical Compendium category for Spiritualist by Kenneth Fuchs. Her Naxos recording of John Corigliano's Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan received two Grammys in 2008. Her 2020 Naxos recording of orchestral music of Florent Schmitt with the Buffalo Philharmonic recently received the Diapason d'Or Award.

Kenneth Fuchs's music is performed worldwide and has achieved significant global media exposure through audio broadcast, downloading and streaming. Fuchs serves as Professor of Composition at the University of Connecticut. He received his doctor of musical arts degrees in composition from The Juilliard School, where his teachers included Milton Babbitt, David Diamond and Vincent Persichetti. His music is published by Edward B. Marks Music Company, Hal Leonard Corporation, Theodore Presser Company, and Yelton Rhodes Music, and it has been recorded by Albany, Cala, and Naxos Records.

Russell Platt holds a unique position in American music. As a composer, he is the winner of both the Charles Ives Scholarship and Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, a Copland House Fellowship, a McKnight Fellowship from the American Composers Forum, an ASCAP Young Composers Award, and several composer residencies at Yaddo. He currently serves on the faculty of the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music in Nashville.

Born in Shanghai, American composer Wang Jie has emerged as one of the most evocative musical voices of her generation. Her works have been described as "powerfully engaging, richly orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant." She came to the United States on a scholarship from Manhattan School of Music where she began her composition studies as a student of Nils Vigeland and later at the Curtis Institute of Music with Richard Danielpour.

More information on Maestro Falletta may be found at www.joannfalletta.com

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