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Though conductor Giancarlo Guerrero grew up in Latin America, he’s no stranger to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or the city itself.
The six-time Grammy Award-winning maestro recalls that the CSO played a crucial role in his artistic development. “The CSO has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember,” said Guerrero, music director of the Nashville Symphony and NFM Wrocław Philharmonic and principal guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon.
A native of Nicaragua, Guerrero grew up in Costa Rica, where, thanks to WFMT-FM broadcasts, the CSO was the first professional orchestra he heard. In the ’80s, while he was performing in a Costa Rican youth orchestra, Guerrero had a friend whose family subscribed to a cable package, which included WFMT as one of only a few American stations. After rehearsals, they would go to his friend’s house on Friday nights and listen to Chicago Symphony broadcasts. “It was both inspirational and scary,” Guerrero said. “We thought, ‘We have to practice more!’ ”
By listening to those those broadcasts, Guerrero familiarized himself with conductors and repertoire. “I knew who all the players were, the same way most kids know the players from their baseball cards.”
Later, he studied percussion and conducting at Baylor University in Texas and earned his master’s degree in conducting at Northwestern University. Given his beginnings in civic youth orchestras, Guerrero is devoted to 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 students from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
In Chicago this season, Guerrero will lead a jazz meets classical program when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis in a three-concert engagement April 25-27.
