Nashville Symphony’s conductor and musical director, Giancarlo Guerrero, was born in Nicaragua, in its capital, Managua, but he grew up in Costa Rica. In the ‘70s, Central America was not a very happy place. Nicaragua was entrenched in a long, bloody civil war for much of his early childhood. After the war was over in 1980, he and his family were forced to move from their country because their homeland had become unstable, even after the war was over. They moved next door to Costa Rica and though the countries are next to each other, they couldn’t have been more different. Costa Rica being a very peaceful country, with no army, and they spent a lot of money on education and culture for their citizens. Costa Rica, because they had a youth symphony orchestra program where he started, is what gave him the opportunity to learn music.