Conductor JoAnn Falletta, Buffalo Philharmonic & Chorus Receive GRAMMY Nominations For Danielpour's PASSION OF YESHUA

The Recording Academy announced today that acclaimed conductor JoAnn Falletta received a prestigious 2021 GRAMMY Nomination for Best Choral Performance as conductor of the world premiere Naxos recording, Richard Danielpour's "The Passion of Yeshua" with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus prepared by Adam Luebke, and the UCLA Chamber Singers prepared by James K. Bass.

Presented and commissioned by the GRAMMY Award-winning Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director JoAnn Falletta, this recording features a superb group of soloists including James K. Bass, J'Nai Bridges, Timothy Fallon, Kenneth Overton, Hila Plitmann and Matthew Worth.

The highly acclaimed Yeshua recording also received nominations for composer Richard Danielpour for Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Bernd Gottinger for Best Engineered Album. Gottinger is the audio and video producer behind the BPO's current virtual performance series, BPO OnDemand.

Says Falletta, "The Passion of Yeshua is an intensely personal telling of the final hours of Christ on earth, and in Richard Danielpour's vision, the work beautifully incorporates the Jewish faith and the cadence of the Hebrew language into music of extraordinary beauty. Congratulations to all the performers - soloists, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and UCLA Chamber Singers, Adam Luebke and James Bass, chorus directors and most of all to Richard Danielpour for his stunning piece. I am so honored to have been part of this astonishing work. Richard's gift for writing for voice, and for the astonishing colors of his orchestration, will make this work a classic for all time."

Throughout his life, GRAMMY-nominated American composer Richard Danielpour wished to write a Passion that depicts the timeless story of the death of Jesus Christ in a manner that speaks to modern people. Using both English and Hebrew texts, The Passion of Yeshua received its world premiere performance at the Oregon Bach Festival in July 2018 under the baton of Maestro Falletta, and its East Coast premiere and first full-scale performance in April 2019 with Falletta leading the BPO.
The GRAMMY Awards will be broadcast on CBS on Sunday, January 31, 2021 at 8 p.m. EST and streamed live on GRAMMY.com.

JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Connie and Marc Jacobson Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center and Artistic Adviser to the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. As Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major America ensemble. Her recent and upcoming North American guest conducting includes the National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, and Milwaukee Symphony; and further north, the Toronto Symphony and Orchestre metropolitain.

Internationally, she has conducted many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia, and South America. With a discography of almost 120 titles, Falletta is a leading recording artist for Naxos. Her recordings for Naxos also include the double GRAMMY Award-winning disc of Mr. Tambourine Man by John Corigliano (8.559331) with the Buffalo Philharmonic and GRAMMY Award-nominated discs of works by Dohnányi, Fuchs, Gershwin, Hailstork, Holst, Respighi, Schubert, Strauss, and Tyberg.