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 11 world premieres and 15 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.
The 2021-22 season sees Guerrero’s debut with the San Francisco Symphony, where he will conduct Timothy McAllister in the world premiere of John Corigliano’s Triathlon for Saxophonist and Orchestra, along with return engagements with the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Though live concerts in the 2020-21 season were largely canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic (including the Nashville Symphony season and appearances with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberg Symphony, Frankfurt Opera and Museums Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony), Guerrero performed in virtual concerts with the Houston and Boston symphonies. In winter 2020, he returned 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. Their Billboard chart-topping album “Bomsori: Violin on Stage” was released on Deutsche Grammophon in June.
Other recent additions to Guerrero’s discography include a 2021 Naxos release of John Adams’ “My Father Knew Charles Ives”/“Harmonielehre” and a recording of Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 and the Academic Festival Overture, released on NFM Wrocław’s own label. In 2020 Naxos released three new recordings by Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony of repertoire by Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Rouse (winner of the 2021 Grammy Award for best contemporary composition) and Tobias Picker’s “Opera Without Words.”
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’s Miami residency, music director of the Eugene (Ore.) Symphony and associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Born in Nicaragua, Guerrero as a child moved 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 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.
September 2021
