Mission Statement
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Society, Inc. provides a resident, professional, major symphony orchestra of artistic excellence and integrity to enrich the quality of life in Western New York through the presentation of live symphonic music and other musical events which educate and entertain the broadest possible audiences within and beyond the Western New York region.
History of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
As Buffalo’s cultural ambassador, the Grammy Award-winning Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under Music Director JoAnn Falletta presents more than 120 Classics, Pops and Youth Concerts each year and reaches more than 40,000 K-12 students per year across all eight counties of Western New York.
Since 1940, the orchestra’s permanent home has been Kleinhans Music Hall, a National Historic Landmark designed by Eliel and Eero Saarinen with an international reputation as one of the finest concert halls in the United States.
The BPO has toured widely across the United States and Canada including the Florida Friends Tour with JoAnn Falletta in March 2010, the first multi-city tour since the 1988 European tour. In February 2014, the BPO will again tour Florida.
The BPO has been invited to perform at Carnegie Hall as a participant in the prestigious Spring For Music festival in 2013. They were one of six orchestras selected from a national field to present a program at this festival. This will be the orchestra's 24th appearance at Carnegie Hall and its first since Music Director JoAnn Falletta led the orchestra in a much-heralded appearance there in June 2004.
Over the decades, the BPO has matured in stature under the batons of some of the leading stars of the podium. William Steinberg, Josef Krips, Lukas Foss, Michael Tilson Thomas, Maximiano Valdez, Semyon Bychkov and Julius Rudel are among the luminaries who have served as music directors of the Buffalo Philharmonic.
During the tenure of current music director JoAnn Falletta, the BPO has rekindled its distinguished history of radio broadcasts and recordings, including the release of 24 new CDs of a highly diverse repertoire on the NAXOS and Beau Fleuve labels. The Philharmonic’s Naxos recording of composer John Corigliano’s “Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan,” featuring soprano Hila Plitmann, won Grammys in two categories of the three for which it was nominated: Classical Vocal Performance and Classical Contemporary Composition.
The orchestra has several recordings planned for release in 2013. A Tchaikovsky disc will be released in January. A disc of Duke Ellington's music will be released on the Naxos label in February 2013, with a disc of Gershwin music slated for a June 2013 release. The second disc of the BPO's multi-year Marcel Tyberg recording project will also be released in June 2013.
