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Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto is one of the central figures of contemporary Mexican symphonic music. At the helm of the Sinfónica de Minería, one of the best orchestras in Latin America, Prieto leads a 2026 tour of the United States with programs that singularly highlight the talent of his orchestra, the music of Mexican and Latin American composers and the virtuosity of soloists also originating from Latin America.
Prieto, who describes himself as “proudly Mexican,” is a conductor with international projection, with mastery of a broad symphonic repertoire (proof of this are his recordings of works by Rachmaninov, Elgar, Korngold and Falla as the head of the Sinfónica de Minería) and a vocation for cultural and educational dissemination that has made him a champion of the symphonic repertoire of Mexico and Latin America.
Under his baton, for example, Sinfónica de Minería has made recordings that have been nominated for six Latin Grammy Awards, winning in the category of best classical composition for the recording of the Concierto venezolano by the Cuban-American Paquito D’Rivera, a work that the Sinfónica de Minería, along with compositions by the Mexican Silvestre Revueltas, will perform in a Symphony Center Presents Featured Concert on Jan. 18 in Chicago, part of the Sinfónica de Minería’s U.S. tour that will visit California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Missouri.
Prieto also is music director of the North Carolina Symphony and was music director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico and the Louisiana Philharmonic, in addition to being a guest conductor with numerous orchestras in Europe, the United States and the Americas.
Sinfónica de Minería: dedication and musical excellence
In an interview, Prieto points out that the Sinfónica de Minería “is one of the most important Latin American orchestras” because of the ensemble’s great musical quality and because of the enthusiasm and dedication with which its members play. In addition, Prieto indicates, it is “an orchestra founded by Mexican civil society; it is not a [government-controlled] orchestra, but rather an orchestra that has always sought musical excellence at all costs."
Evidence of that excellence includes its Grammy nominations and the fact that the Sinfónica de Minería is the first orchestra from Mexico to record for the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label: the album “Estirpe” (2022), in which the virtuoso Venezuelan trumpeter Pacho Flores and the Sinfónica de Minería, conducted by Prieto, make a powerful journey through contemporary works for trumpet.
Flores will be the soloist of the Sinfónica de Minería’s concert in Chicago, in which he will perform in noble contrast the aforementioned Concierto venezolano by D’Rivera and the iconic Trumpet Concerto by Franz Joseph Haydn.
Prieto emphasizes that the Sinfónica de Minería “is an orchestra in which, like many orchestras in Latin America and Mexico, we play with tremendous eagerness and a dedication to which perhaps the audience is not always accustomed in symphony orchestras,” which gives special value to its concert at Symphony Center.
The program on Jan. 18 is a powerful statement of, at once, virtuosity and musical and cultural richness.
“We are going to start with Sensemayá, by Silvestre Revueltas, which is a brilliant work. A work that I did about 10 years ago [in December 2014] with the Chicago Symphony. For me it will be emotional to repeat that work where I performed it with an orchestra as important as the Chicago Symphony,” Prieto said.
In Sensemayá or “chant to kill a snake,” Revueltas fuses Afro-Cuban and Mexican elements in a symphonic work of intense color and rhythm, which moreover, being inspired by the poem Sensemayá by the Cuban writer Nicolás Guillén, has an intention of political denunciation against economic and racial oppression.
“We are also going to perform one of the works we have done the most, a work that we have done, literally, all over the world": La noche de los mayas, also by Silvestre Revuelta, Prieto said. “It is a work that has an enormous number of percussion instruments, of instruments special to this work,” Prieto said in reference to instruments, some of them of pre-Hispanic origin, such as conch shells, the huéhuetl, rattles, güiro and other percussion.
The version of La noche de los mayas (a suite that the Mexican conductor José Ives Limantour made from the music that Revueltas composed for the film of the same name) that the Sinfónica de Minería will perform includes toward the end an eruption in the percussion in which improvisation takes on a special role. “It is not so common in an orchestra concert for improvisation to be given such importance,“ Prieto said. ”And this is another of the unique things that the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería has: we have many musicians who improvise and each concert is absolutely different.” .
Silvestre Revueltas’ vital connection with Chicago
Revueltas also has a vital connection with Chicago, since the composer lived, studied, worked, married and had a daughter in the Windy City between 1919 and 1925. For that reason, Revueltas “is totally at home,” Prieto said in reference to the works of this Mexican composer that the Sinfónica de Minería will perform in Chicago “with enormous quality and great conviction."
In addition to those two monumental works by Revueltas, rooted at once in Mexican nationalism with allusions to pre-Hispanic times (La noche de los mayas) and in the critique of oppression in Latin America with an Afro-Cuban spirit (Sensemayá) that orchestra will perform at Symphony Center, the Concierto venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera with “Pacho Flores, the great Venezuelan trumpeter, as soloist, a person who grew up within El Sistema and who, together with Gustavo Dudamel, are perhaps the two great figures of El Sistema,” Prieto said.
El Sistema is the Venezuelan model of music education and youth orchestras that, because of the enormous quality of its musicians and ensembles, has gained enormous prestige and influence on an international scale.
In D’Rivera’s Concierto venezolano, a work that vibrates with elements of popular Latin genres such as merengue and joropo, the trumpet has a central role, but Prieto explains, in that work there also participates “a soloist of the cuatro, which is like a little guitar, a very important Venezuelan instrument.” It will be played at Symphony Center by Héctor Molina, one of the world’s best cuatro players.
In the Concierto venezolano, Prieto notes that “in the cadenza, in the moment where Pacho begins to improvise, Héctor Molina also improvises,” which is a further example of the confidence, freedom, and creativity that characterize the musicians who will participate in this concert in Chicago.
“The program is foolproof, and for the audience, especially for the Latino audience, the Mexican audience, well, don’t miss it,” Prieto said, revealing a kind of secret or surprise: “We are going to do as encores Huapango by Moncayo and Danzón by Márquez. You can already imagine what that is going to be like.” In, short, it will be a fiesta, a celebration.
“What I would like is to extend an invitation with all affection and with complete confidence that we will have a great event,” Prieto said.
Listening to the Sinfónica de Minería conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto, with its way of playing characterized by intensity and dedication, by talent and joy, promises to an extraordinary experience. It will be an afternoon in which, in addition to enjoying works by great masters of Latin America of yesterday and today performed by great interpreters, the Chicago audience will be able to feel an emotion and an energy that connect times, peoples and geographies through music.
