Executive Director
President & Executive Director Daniel Hart has served in this leadership role since 2004. Since then, in concert with Music Director JoAnn Falletta, a stellar management team, and the Board of Trustees, the orchestra has achieved a number of important milestones. These include a nearly 10-fold increase in endowment funds to more than $60 million, record season ticket sales, and a dramatic increase in attendance for education programs. In his role as Director of Kleinhans Music Hall, Hart has overseen two capital campaigns that raised over $20 million and established an endowment for the historic venue. Under his leadership, the orchestra has appeared twice at Carnegie Hall, conducted five much-heralded tours of Florida, and toured five cities in Poland at the invitation of the Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw in 2018.
The BPO has over 60 recordings between Naxos and its own label, Beau Fleuve. With the digitalization of its recording catalogue, its recordings are now streamed in as many as 150 countries around the globe each month. In 2009, the recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Songs of Bob Dylan won two GRAMMY Awards, and in 2020, its recording of Richard Danielpour's The Passion of Yeshua won the GRAMMY for Best Choral Performance. Numerous other CD projects have received GRAMMY nominations, most recently for Best Orchestral Performance in both 2024 and 2025. Furthermore, the orchestra has appeared twice on NPR’s popular program From the Top, and its concerts are broadcast frequently on American Public Media’s Performance Today to over 200 cities nationwide.
Hart's career began when he was chosen to participate in the Orchestra Management Fellowship Program of the League of American Orchestras. His fellowship year included residencies with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Colorado Springs Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. His first professional position was as Assistant Manager and Development Director of the Kansas City Symphony (1987–1988), where his duties spanned fundraising, education, and operations. He went on to hold Executive Director posts with the Baton Rouge Symphony (1988–1990), the Colorado Springs Symphony (1990–1994), and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra (1994–1998). Prior to his arrival in Buffalo, he served as President and Executive Director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra (1998–2004). Over the years, Hart has served on various committees for the League of American Orchestras and as a grant review panelist for the Colorado Arts Council, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, and the Michigan Council on the Arts. Trained as a musician on the double bass, he performed as a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the American Youth Orchestra, the Debut Orchestra of the Young Musicians Foundation in Los Angeles, and the Rome Festival Orchestra in Italy before embarking on his career in orchestra management.