Miller Outdoor Theatre: Elgar’s Enigma Variations

Multiple Grammy Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center, and Conductor Laureate of the Hawaii Symphony. She was named one of the 50 great conductors of all time by Gramophone Magazine and ASCAP has honored her as “a leading force for music of our time.”

As Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra. She has guest-conducted over 100 orchestras in North America, and many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia, and South America. She is a leading recording artist for Naxos, and has won two individual Grammy Awards, for Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua with the BPO and Spiritualist by Kenneth Fuchs with the London Symphony. Her Naxos recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man with the BPO received two Grammys. Her Scriabin recording with the BPO was nominated for a 2024 Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance.

Falletta is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served by Presidential appointment as a Member of the National Council on the Arts. She has conducted over 1,600 orchestral works by more than 600 composers, including over 135 works by women composers, and over 150 premieres.

After earning her bachelor’s degree at Mannes, Falletta received master’s and doctoral degrees from The Juilliard School.

American violinist and violist Annelle K. Gregory is a laureate of international competitions, concert soloist, and recording artist. She is the first prize and Audience Choice Award winner of the 2017 National Sphinx Competition and laureate of the 2013 Stradivarius International Violin Competition.
Annelle’s love of Russian music has led her to discover and revive forgotten works of great Russian composers, presenting these works in concert and in recordings. In 2017, she released the first CD of Rachmaninoff’s complete violin/piano works, recorded with pianist Alexander Sinchuk (Bridge Records). Her most recent CD, Russian Music for Solo Violin and Orchestra with conductor Dmitry Yablonsky and the Kiev Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra was released by Naxos in 2019.
As a soloist, Annelle has performed with the symphonies of Houston, Detroit, Chicago Sinfonietta, Kiev Virtuosi, San Diego, New Jersey, Nashville, and Philadelphia, working alongside such conductors as Mei-Ann Chen, Andrew Grams, Lawrence Loh, Ken-David Masur, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, John Morris Russell, Thomas Wilkins, Dmitry Yablonsky, and Xian Zhang. She has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Hall, as well as abroad in Azerbaijan, England, Germany, Guadeloupe, Portugal, Russia, Spain, and Ukraine. She has been featured on BBC, NPR, KUSC, and WQXR radios as well as on German television and PBS.
Annelle was awarded the 2017 Isaac Stern Award and has received scholarships from the Musical Merit Foundation and the League of Allied Arts. Other awards include first prizes in the 2017 Grand Prize Virtuoso International Competition, the 2017 NANM National Strings Competition, the 2017 Beverly Hills National Auditions, the 2016
American Protégé International Concerto Competition, and the 2012 NAACP ACT-SO
National Strings Competition. After graduating from high school with honors at age 16,
Annelle graduated first in her class, summa cum laude, from USC’s Thornton School of Music with departmental honors, and she became the first music performance major to win the Discovery Scholar Prize. She then studied at the Moscow Conservatory International School for two summers. Her teachers have included Michael and Irina Tseitlin, Glenn Dicterow, and Alexander Kirov. www.AnnelleViolin.com