Giancarlo Guerrero, Conductor
Giancarlo Guerrero is a six-time GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor, Music Director of the Nashville Symphony and NFM Wrocław Philharmonic and Principal Guest Conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon. Guerrero has been praised for his “charismatic conducting and attention to detail” (Seattle Times) in “viscerally powerful performances” (Boston Globe) that are “at once vigorous, passionate, and nuanced” (BachTrack).
Through commissions, recordings, and world premieres, Guerrero has championed the works of prominent American composers, presenting eleven world premieres and fifteen recordings of American music with the Nashville Symphony, including works by Michael Daugherty, Terry Riley and Jonathan Leshnoff.
As part of his commitment to fostering contemporary music, Guerrero, together with composer Aaron Jay Kernis, guided the creation of Nashville Symphony’s biannual Composer Lab & Workshop for young and emerging composers.
In the summer of 2020, though live concerts were largely canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, Naxos released three new recordings by Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony of repertoire “performed with horsepower and passion” (Gramophone) by Aaron Jay Kernis, “robust performances” (New Yorker) of the music of Christopher Rouse, and Tobias Picker’s Opera Without Words. “It goes without saying,” writes Textura, “that all three are in the best of hands when their works are performed by Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony.”
Guerrero’s 2019/20 season included a thirteen-city North American tour with the Wrocław Philharmonic and return engagements with the Boston Symphony and the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra. Spring 2020 was also to have included engagements with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberg Symphony, Frankfurt Opera and Museums Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony. While fall 2020 engagements in North and South America – including the Nashville Symphony season, his debut with the San Francisco Symphony and appearances with the Boston Symphony and Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo – were canceled, Guerrero did perform in a livestreamed concert with the Houston Symphony in August 2020. In the fall of 2020, and spring of 2021, he returns to Europe to perform Beethoven with the Gulbenkian Orchestra and lead the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic in eight different programs, including a recording session with the orchestra and violinist Bomsori Kim.
Maestro Guerrero has appeared with prominent North American orchestras, including those of Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Montréal, Philadelphia, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, and the National Symphony Orchestra. Internationally he has worked in recent seasons with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Brussels Philharmonic, Deutsches Radio Philharmonie, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Netherlands Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest, NDR in Hannover, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Queensland Symphony and Sydney Symphony in Australia. Guerrero was honored as the keynote speaker at the 2019 League of American Orchestras conference.
Guerrero previously held posts as the Principal Guest Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra Miami Residency, Music Director of the Eugene Symphony, and Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Born in Nicaragua, Guerrero immigrated during his childhood to Costa Rica, where he joined the local youth symphony. He studied percussion and conducting at Baylor University in Texas and earned his master’s degree in conducting at Northwestern. Given his beginnings in civic youth orchestras, Guerrero is particularly engaged with conducting training orchestras and has worked with the Curtis School of Music, Colburn School in Los Angeles, National Youth Orchestra (NYO2) and Yale Philharmonia, as well as with the Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando program, which provides an intensive music education to promising young students from diverse ethnic backgrounds.