Lina González-Granados looks back with gratitude as her Solti position ends

As Lina González-Granados concludes her tenure as the fourth Solti Conducting Apprentice of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the rapidly ascending, Colombian-born conductor can be proud of her stellar achievements. After landing high-profile fellowships at the Seattle Symphony (2019-21), the Philadelphia Orchestra (2019-22) and the CSO (2020-2023), last year she became resident conductor of the Los Angeles Opera, through 2025.

Her Solti apprenticeship began right before the start of the pandemic and reached a pinnacle when she conducted the CSO twice last year. The first, in April 2022, was a career-defining event, with echoes of Leonard Bernstein’s 1943 debut with the New York Philharmonic, as González-Granados swiftly stepped in for Music Director Riccardo Muti after he came down with COVID-19. She also replaced him in June, when he tested positive again for COVID. She made history as the first Latin-American woman to lead the CSO — a moment of pride for all South America and the large Latino population in Chicago and around the country.    

Two months earlier, in February 2022, she made her debut with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, leading Rimsky-Korsakov’s colorful Sheherazade and Three Latin American Dances by Gabriela Lena Frank. Founded in 1919, the Civic Orchestra is one of the country’s oldest front-rank organizations of its kind. Ken-David Masur has been its principal conductor since 2019, but the Solti Apprentice is invited to lead the ensemble at the free annual Negaunee Music Institute Showcase, presented this year on June 12 at Symphony Center. The concert’s chamber-music performances draw from the NMI’s various programs — which include the Civic Orchestra — that train instrumentalists on track for careers in professional orchestras. 

For this year’s NMI Showcase, González-Granados is reuniting with her Civic colleagues and musicians from the CSO as she leads two pieces that require a conductor. In a recent video interview, she described the showcase as a “collaborative effort,” downplaying her role to serving as “a vehicle to help [the musicians] show the best of their talents.” 

With two world premieres, the NMI Showcase also will spotlight oboist Zachary Allen, a Fellow of Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative, which prepares youths from underrepresented demographic groups; violinist Esme Arias-Kim, winner of the 2023 Crain-Maling Foundation CSO Young Artists Competition, and clarinetist Zachary Good, a Civic Fellowship alumnus, who was commissioned to write a piece for the occasion: Umbral Dust, for solo bass clarinet. The other world-premiere work is For Peter Sellars by Tyshawn Sorey, a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist, that celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Civic Orchestra’s Fellowship program.

The concert marks González-Granados’ last scheduled public appearance as the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprentice, named after the CSO's eighth music director. The program begins with Paul Dukas’ Fanfare from La Péri, a short curtain opener that González-Granados played as a wind-ensemble conducting student. The other piece she’s leading is Civic 100 by Josh Fink. The Montreal-based composer, a Civic alumnus, wrote the piece three years ago during the pandemic to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Civic Orchestra. It was recorded by 11 Civic musicians during the COVID-19 lockdown, each playing several parts of the score for strings and winds, and the tracks were later mixed.  

For González-Granados, the two rehearsals and the performance are an opportunity to bond with Civic colleagues. It’s neither a “one-person show,” nor a “young-orchestra kind of setting,” said the conductor, a native of Cali, Colombia, who came to the United States to study at the New England Conservatory and Boston University. “The baseline level is very high, so the approach to rehearsals is the way that I would rehearse a professional orchestra, where there is an assumed trust of prior preparation — we put things in context and make the best possible artistic product. Of course, you strive to inspire them and give them something more than just a gig.” 

Sorey’s For Peter Sellars is scored for piano quintet and three percussionists, without a conductor. A big fan of the composer, González-Granados had received his score of For Roscoe Mitchell, a 20-minute piece for cellist Seth Parker Woods, because she was going to conduct it during the pandemic. Ultimately that didn’t happen, but “it was fascinating to see [Sorey’s] thought process and the high complexity of the layers of his music, all put into the service of something so emotional.”  

Another emotional moment for González-Granados was that Civic Orchestra performance in 2022, shortly before her apprenticeship was originally scheduled to end. (The two-year appointment was extended for another season.) A short video highlighting her time with the CSO was played to introduce her. “It was very moving,” she said. It included pictures of her CSO audition, which was “absolutely, without a doubt, the biggest game-changer of my career.” And so it was. 

Though she is scheduled to conduct the Civic again next season, her last official day as the Solti Apprentice is June 27, the same day of the free Concert for Chicago in Millennium Park, celebrating Muti’s 13-year tenure with the CSO. Muti's guidance has been immeasurable. “There’s nothing that I am more grateful for than seeing him, for the learning experience,” she said.

Even more than filling in for Muti on those two occasions, she cherishes all the times she spent watching him in rehearsal, as she perused her copy of the score.  

“He’s able to create colors that nobody does and knows where the intricacies and the magic lie,” she said, with an evident tone of reverence. “He respects the score to the point of being obsessively respectful of the composer, but he also knows, for example, if some things can be less than what’s written. And he knows the whole, inside and out.”