New City Music: Metro Maestro: For Giancarlo Guerrero, Grant Park is a Homecoming

By Dennis Polkow, June 3, 2025

It’s a warm, late spring day but the new Grant Park Music Festival artistic director and principal conductor Giancarlo Guerrero is indoors.

“We’ve had auditions today,” says Guerrero. “That’s why we have this little wall here. We have auditions today and tomorrow.

“What happens, as you can imagine, especially post-pandemic, is there were a lot of early retirements and people moving on to other things. With orchestras and opera houses, there’s always a certain degree of turnover or people retiring or getting other positions. But I think the pandemic accelerated some of those, particularly people that were close to retirement or for health reasons, for whatever reasons, decided to call it quits a little earlier.

“We have to have auditions worldwide. We open this to anybody who wants to apply. We go through a whole process of elimination and then we have the final rounds, which I have to come into town for, along with many of my colleagues from the orchestra, which form a committee. And remember, many of them come from all over the country. So, logistically and scheduling-wise, it can be tricky. We can only do so many of them in a year.

“Those auditioning are behind the screen, completely anonymous. We know nothing about them: where they come from or their résumés or their age or their race or gender. And basically, the audition is we ask these candidates to play the most difficult music ever written for their instrument. And the last one standing gets the job.

“Or not. As was the case in my last visit here, there were a couple of positions that in the end, we didn’t feel that the candidates in the final round played well enough for us to appoint them. So, we do a no-hire and we have to do it over again. This can take time.”

So Guerrero has been through the audition today once already?

“Twice already. Two positions.”

What were the positions?

“I cannot say because they just happened and they haven’t been announced yet. What happens is people figure out once we announce the position, ‘Oh, I guess they didn’t hire anybody last time.’ When you see the same position being posted again, you know.

“But normally when we hire somebody—let’s say if I hire somebody today—we cannot say anything because that person sometimes may have another position. There is a whole process. It’s not an immediate, ‘Oh, I’ll take the job.’ There’s a negotiation and what have you.

“These audition processes sometimes can take years to fill because what happens in those ten, fifteen, twenty minutes when you come and play, that you’re expected to play your best, sometimes the gods don’t smile upon you. It happens. It happens to all of us. And even after you get the job, there’s still a probationary process.

“It’s a fascinating process, but it’s nerve-racking. Of course, I would love to just find the person and get it over with. When you don’t, it’s another year-to-year-and-a-half before you’re able to do it again. In the meantime, of course, there are great players in Chicago, that’s one of the great things of living in a place like this. There’s no absence of incredible players that could fill in on an interim basis. But at the same time, you want some stability as well.”

Guerrero has been music director of the Nashville Symphony for the past sixteen seasons, but is no stranger to Chicago.

“I find it remarkable that my life path has brought me back to Chicago, a place that in many ways—even before I knew where it was—shaped my life and my musical career.

“I was born in Nicaragua, but went to Costa Rica as a refugee with my family, basically starting all over again. My parents used to say, ‘It was like being married again, but with three kids and no wedding presents.’

“I started with music, which for most kids in Costa Rica was a hobby. I was a percussionist and after high school, it was youth orchestra. Having all of my buddies in the youth orchestra was the best type of peer pressure because if you didn’t practice and keep your chops up, you would be out the next year and you wouldn’t see your friends. What better way to push you to practice than making sure that you remain part of the orchestra every year?

“These are still our dearest friends, the closest friends in the world to me in Costa Rica to this day. These are people I grew up with and all of whom have made great musical careers themselves. One of them had a shortwave radio, remember those? When the weather was right in Costa Rica, which meant no clouds, we could sometimes catch WFMT. I’m talking 1981-1982. All of us kids would sit around and every now and then, we would hear from WFMT Chicago, ‘Tonight, live from Orchestra Hall, the Chicago Symphony and Sir Georg Solti playing Mahler 6,’ or some such. I remember very vividly we would sit there, twelve to fifteen kids from the youth orchestra, and one of us would say, ‘Shut up! Here comes the bassoon solo!’

“Then one of the parents came to Chicago and walked by Orchestra Hall and picked up a program book and brought it back. All of a sudden, these concerts were no longer anonymous. Now we knew Herseth, Clevenger, Jacobs and these people became the closest thing that we had to our baseball-card heroes. But they didn’t know this.

“So when I conducted the CSO for the first time in my debut in 2016 or 2017, I told the orchestra the story and they were very moved by it. I had to share because there were players that were still there then. I said, ‘You were doing what you do, what you did every day perfectly and beautifully, but you didn’t know the impact that this was having on a bunch of kids ten-thousand miles away in another galaxy sitting around and listening to you and inspiring us to what was possible.’

“And then, of course, coming to school here at Northwestern during the Solti years as a master’s student in conducting, I came here as both a percussion and conducting student. And my God, to hear the Chicago Symphony on a weekly basis! The first time I heard the orchestra live was at Ravinia, Mahler 5 with Zubin Mehta.”

How ironic that Guerrero’s first live CSO concert would have been at Ravinia when he is now taking over Grant Park.

“Isn’t that remarkable? I went to the Grant Park Festival as well. And I heard every orchestra that came on tour to Chicago: Vienna, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw. Coming to Chicago for a young musician and the opportunity to actually hear these orchestras live was amazing.

“And now, with all of my own history, here I am. It is such a great privilege that once again, my path has taken me here. And on top of that, my daughter lives here. She went to school at Northwestern as an economist and works at United Airlines. Talk about the greatest excuse to be here. I arrived last night. I had dinner with her. I’m having dinner with her tonight. This is the most perfect place I can think of for me and my family at this moment.”

Guerrero is at a musical fork in the road: he ended his tenure as music director of the Nashville Symphony in May and begins his artistic directorship and principal conductorship at the Grant Park Symphony on June 18 (although the season itself begins June 11 as Guerrero had previous commitments). After the Grant Park season ends in August, Guerrero will start a music directorship at the Sarasota Orchestra next fall.

“Yeah, it’s a big change. I announced that I was leaving Nashville two years ago because I wanted to make sure that they had enough time to look for a successor. After sixteen seasons, I was going to step down.

“One of the main reasons is very simple. My wife and I have two daughters and Nashville had been my base of operations as a traveling musician. That was home. My kids went to school there. They graduated high school, went on to college, graduated college. So my wife and I said Nashville has served its purpose, which was to raise our family. And after sixteen years, the musicians know all my jokes! Time to move on.

“There was a part of me when I decided it’s not only a family thing that thought, ‘So what do the next five years look like? What haven’t I done?’ Post-pandemic, things have changed. The world has changed.

“And you know what? It’s better to leave when I’m on a high, when things are still good and I have a good relationship with my players. I don’t want to overstay my welcome. And trust me, the last two years when every concert has had an expiration date, have been very special.

“Of course, everybody finds out that all of a sudden, I will become a free agent. And as that would be happening, there were institutions that would be actively involved in searches or were about to start searches. I had also left my orchestra in Europe, in Poland. That also meant a lot of weeks that I was going to be available.

“In the end, I started getting invited to come to these places that were in search mode. And Grant Park was one of them. I hadn’t been here in a while. I don’t think for any particular reason—ninety-nine percent of the time when that happens it’s because of scheduling.”

How long had it been since Guerrero had conducted at Grant Park?

“It had been like ten years. I came in 2024 and then I would say the last time before that was either 2014 or 2015 that I was here. And once before that also.

“Most of my summers I had spent in the Southern Hemisphere where it is winter. I would go to Australia, New Zealand and Brazil where they were in full season, to work there. I would spend nearly a month in Brazil. I love going to São Paulo. It’s a great orchestra.

“But then, Grant Park invited me to come last summer. I knew they were on a search, and I came to conduct with no strings attached. I had a couple of programs that included not only the orchestra for the first concert, but then the orchestra and the chorus for the second concert. And as they say, we clicked. We hit it off right away.

“The search could have gone on for a couple of more years if necessary. Remember, it’s like with auditions, you don’t pull the trigger until you have the person. But in this case it was immediately apparent to both of us—not only them to me, but me to them as well—that there was something special there. That my week with the orchestra was very nice. The musicians were very happy. The chorus, which did the Duruflé ‘Requiem,’ was incredible.

“They welcomed me with open arms and played really well for me and sang really well for me. The audience reaction, everything just came into place. And when they offered me the position, a world-class festival with such a great history and plus the opportunity to come back to Chicago, here we are.

“Of course, when I was here in the middle of my musical duties, I was doing—I guess you can call them interviews—with different constituencies of the institution, whether it was staff, board members, donors, musicians or volunteers, and everybody wants to pick a little bit of your brain. The thing that became very clear to me is the fact that there is, first and foremost, immense pride in what’s happening here.

“That, to me, was incredibly apparent, that the people here are deeply committed to the institution. The level of generosity and giving here is quite special. In a community filled with so many other great artistic institutions, Grant Park holds its place with all of the others.

“We are unique and everything that we put out there has to somehow reflect that. Right now, we’re in the middle of this endowment campaign, Grant Park Festival Forever, where the main goal is to keep it free. This community is coming together to ensure that this remains available to anyone, regardless of background or financial means. I love the fact that my rehearsals are open to the public, whether I like it or not.

“You’re going to hear music here in a way that you may never have heard before, alongside pieces that perhaps you may never get a chance to hear live again, by composers that usually you can only experience in recordings. My colleagues look at what we’re doing and say, ‘Oh, we could never get away with that.’ Well, guess what. In Chicago, we can. And not only can we get away with it, we champion it in the same way that we champion Mozart and Beethoven and all those other folks.

“And you know what I look forward to myself? Being in the audience. My daughter lives here, so I have a perfect excuse to stay here if I’m not conducting somewhere else.

“I would love to stay here and sit in the lawn and bring my picnic and my wine with my family. I definitely want to see it from this end, from the audience side. I want to hear the sound system I have heard so much about. You know, I haven’t heard it yet because I was always over there. I want to experience it with the people that make the Grant Park Music Festival. All of these anonymous people that come in just because they happen to be walking by and they throw down a blanket and they’re hearing a concert. I want to experience that. What a great place to spend my summers, in Chicago. And not only get to hear the Grant Park Festival, but everything else that goes on in the city in the summer.

“I am interested in what everybody is doing. I would be interested in what’s happening in the middle of some park in some neighborhood. I want to go explore restaurants. There’s not enough years in my life to be able to explore everything that the city has to offer. And of course, hearing the Chicago Symphony just like the Grant Park Festival and the Lyric Opera. I have so many colleagues and friends and people that I have loved for so many years and the idea that I will be here and be able to enjoy not only their company, but go see them perform and in some cases, get to make music with them, where else can I do all that? One of the great joys for me is to actually go and celebrate my colleagues’ achievements. And the Ravinia Festival is one of the great festivals in the world. My god, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra! And we have our festival at the Grant Park Music Festival as well. I love the idea of exploring.

“I’m beyond privileged and excited to be part of this institution now, to be part of its history. And the best is yet to come. I mean, to me, as a conductor, and even myself, the things that this festival will permit me to do from a musical point of view are things that I could have only dreamt about. And now I’m going to be able to make them a reality.”

The Grant Park Music Festival opens at 6:30pm June 11; Giancarlo Guerrero conducts his first concert as artistic director and principal conductor 6:30pm June 18; grantparkmusicfestival.com.

Full Article HERE