Scott Cantrell

Marin Alsop has gotten a lot of press recently as the first woman to be music director of a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony. But, depending on your definition of "major," JoAnn Falletta was there first, taking over the Buffalo (N.Y.) Philharmonic in 1998.

G.J. McCARTHY/DMN

Conductor JoAnn Falletta rehearses with DSO musicians.

Tonight, Dr. Falletta is making her debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. She's conducting Copland's Billy the Kid Suite, the Violin Concerto of Miklós Rózsa with violinist Robert McDuffie and Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

Raised in New York by music-loving parents – both children of Italian immigrants – young JoAnn grew up going to concerts at Carnegie and Avery Fisher halls. A quarter-size guitar got her playing the instrument seriously enough to study it as a double major with conducting at New York's Mannes School of Music. But from age 11 her real passion was conducting, which she pursued through a doctorate at the Juilliard School.

Paradoxically, playing the guitar taught her useful lessons for orchestral conducting.

"I did an enormous amount of accompanying singers and flutists and violinists," she says. "You're always trying to give them space.

"More than that, since the guitar is an instrument that cannot sustain, you learn to create an illusion of a line. You're always thinking: Where's it going? How can I pretend to sustain? How far do I have to go?"

As recently as the early 1970s, when she entered Mannes, the idea of a female orchestral conductor was still pretty revolutionary. The Dutch-born Antonia Brico was the first woman to conduct the Berlin and New York philharmonics, in the 1930s, but her career never really took off. Sarah Caldwell had some prominence as an opera conductor. In 1977, Victoria Bond became the first woman to get a Juilliard doctorate in conducting.

"They might have been skeptical at the time," Dr. Falletta says of the Juilliard powers that be, "but they were willing to try it."

When she first conducted in Europe, Dr. Falletta sensed some coldness from musicians, especially in Germany and Austria. "But they would get over it."

Today, female conductors are still rare enough to occasion notice. But, in addition to Dr. Falletta and Ms. Alsop, those with rising profiles include Kate Tamarkin, Giséle Ben-Dor, Emmanuelle Haïm and Anne Manson.

"I think generally people feel very comfortable with women conductors in this country, and more in Europe as well. Of course, orchestras have changed. They tend to be younger, and to have a lot more women in them. In the next 10, 15, 20 years we will see many more women on podiums."

Dr. Falletta has a growing international guest-conducting schedule and a sizable discography, including Naxos CDs of music by American composers Copland, Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Kenneth Fuchs.

"The wonderful thing about my path through this profession has been that I've always been able to be at a place that was good for my development, that wasn't beyond what I could do, but was also challenging.

"Going from the Denver Chamber Orchestra to the Milwaukee Symphony as associate, to the Women's Philharmonic and Virginia Symphony, Long Beach [Calif.] Symphony and now Buffalo – all those were great opportunities for me to grow."

PLAN YOUR LIFE JoAnn Falletta conducts the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. today, Friday

and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St.

$18 to $108. 214-692-0203, www.dallassymphony.com.

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