Giancarlo Guerrero
Principal Guest Conductor
Cleveland Orchestra Miami
The 2011-12 season marks Giancarlo Guerrero’s first season as principal guest conductor of Cleveland Orchestra Miami, The Cleveland Orchestra's annual performances and activities in the Miami-Dade community. This year also marks his third season as music director of the Nashville Symphony.
Mr. Guerrero’s season began with an opening gala in Nashville with Yo-Yo Ma. He leads several world premieres with the Nashville Symphony during the season, including a new work by Richard Danielpour, a Béla Fleck banjo concerto, and a Terry Riley concerto for electric violin. In addition to his work conducting concerts and in community engagement activities with The Cleveland Orchestra Miami, he returns to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and makes his debut with the Pacific Symphony. Internationally, the season features his first European tour with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, as well as concerts with other European orchestras, and a return to the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra.
A fervent advocate of new music and contemporary composers, he has collaborated with and conducted works by some of America’s most respected composers, including John Adams, John Corigliano, Michael Daugherty, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Roberto Sierra. His first album with the Nashville Symphony, on Naxos, features works by Daugherty and won three 2011 Grammy Awards. Two more albums were recently released, of music by Argentine legend Astor Piazzolla and by American composer Joseph Schwantner; the latter recording received a Grammy Award in early 2012.
During the summer of 2011, Mr. Guerrero led the Philadelphia Orchestra during its summer residencies at Vail and Saratoga. This followed a busy 2010-11 season that included guest conducting engagements on five continents: Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. He now returns annually to Caracas, Venezuela, to conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar and to work with young musicians in the country’s much-lauded El Sistema music education program.
In addition to orchestral engagements, Mr. Guerrero has also led festival and opera performances. He has conducted at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico and works regularly with the Costa Rican Lyric Opera. In 2008, he gave the Australian premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s one-act opera Ainadamar at the Adelaide Festival.
Born in Nicaragua and raised in Costa Rica, Giancarlo Guerrero received a bachelor’s degree in percussion from Baylor University and his master’s degree in conducting from Northwestern University. He was music director of Oregon’s Eugene Symphony (2003-09) and served as associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra (1999-2004). He received the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Helen M. Thompson Award recognizing outstanding achievement among young conductors. Prior to his tenure in Minnesota, he was music director of the Táchira Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela.
Giancarlo Guerrero made his Cleveland Orchestra debut in May 2006. He has led the Orchestra in concerts in Miami, at Severance Hall, at the summertime Blossom Festival, and in its annual downtown community concert in Cleveland.
Updated: March 2012
