About

Giancarlo Guerrero

 
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Giancarlo Guerrero is a six-time GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor and Music Director of the Nashville Symphony. Guerrero has been praised for his charismatic conducting and attention to detail” (Seattle Times) in “viscerally powerful performances” (Boston Globe) that areat once vigorous, passionate, and nuanced” (BachTrack).

Through commissions, recordings, and world premieres, Guerrero has championed the works of prominent American composers. He has led the Nashville Symphony in eleven world premieres and fifteen recordings of American music, including works by Michael Daugherty, Terry Riley and Jonathan Leshnoff, and most recently the GRAMMY® nominated recording of John Adams: My Father Knew Charles Ives & Harmonielehre.

As part of his commitment to fostering the work of contemporary composers, Guerrero, together with composer Aaron Jay Kernis, guided the creation of Nashville Symphony’s biannual Composer Lab & Workshop for young and emerging composers.

In the 2023-24 season, Guerrero returns to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in their joint concert with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He also returns to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao, and Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

Guerrero has also appeared in recent seasons with prominent North American orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and those of Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Montréal, Philadelphia, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, and Houston.  Internationally he has worked with the Deutches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, London Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Netherlands Philharmonic, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Deutsches Radio Philharmonie and Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, as well as the Sydney Symphony and Queensland Symphony in Australia. Guerrero was honored as the keynote speaker at the 2019 League of American Orchestras conference.

Guerrero recently completed a six-season tenure as Music Director of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic. With that orchestra, Guerrero made three recordings including the Billboard chart-topping Bomsori: Violin on Stage on Deutsche Grammophon and albums of repertoire by Brahms, Poulenc and Jongen. 

Guerrero previously held posts as the Principal Guest Conductor of both The Cleveland Orchestra Miami Residency and the Gulbenkian Symphony in Lisbon, Music Director of the Eugene Symphony, and Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra.

Born in Nicaragua, Guerrero immigrated during his childhood 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 (NYO2) 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.