Third Coast Review: Review: Giancarlo Guerrero, Pacho Flores, and the Grant Park Orchestra Welcome the Summer
Louis Harris, June 22, 2025
With the summer solstice just hours away, Giancarlo Guerrero led the Grant Park Orchestra through a program of contemporary music with a Latin American flavor and a Viennese masterpiece at Jay Pritzker Pavilion on Friday evening. This was the first concert that Guerrero conducted as Grant Park Festival’s new Artistic Director and Principal Conductor. He was joined by Venezuela-born trumpet virtuoso Pacho Flores, who performed his own compositions and a concerto he commissioned from Mexican composer Arturo Márquez, Concierto de Otoño.
Jay Pritzker Pavilion is a beautiful space to enjoy classical music. The only problem is the ambient sounds nearby. It’s under the flight path to Midway Airport, it’s close to Michigan Avenue, Columbus Avenue, and DuSable Lake Shore Drive, and there are often loud activities in other parts of Grant Park. Sounds of helicopters, planes, ambulances, and drag races are routine. Friday evening was pretty good except for a couple of distracting instances.
The program started with Baião N’ Blues, which Chicago-based, Brazilian composer Clarice Assad wrote in 2023. Baião N’ Blues demonstrates her ability to harness the orchestra’s different timbers as it melds syncopated Baião sounds from Northeastern Brazil and American blues. Throughout, the orchestra’s sections mix and match with upwardly moving melodies switching between the sections.
Baião N’ Blues starts with a flourish from the full orchestra, which leads to woodwinds scampering about, with a wayward trumpet in the distance. Things get a little tense when a trombone sounds off, just before an obligato piano announces a breezy section with a charming melody. Under Guerrero’s leadership, the balance was perfect.
During a set change, the piano was moved to the side and two trumpet-like instruments were brought onstage. When Flores entered, he was carrying three more trumpets. Setting two of them down, he and the orchestra performed Morocota, a soulful waltz that he composed originally for trumpet and guitar. Flores orchestrated it in 2019. The program notes reproduced his description from an interview on KPBS in San Diego: “Morocota is a waltz, and I dedicate it to my mother. The style for this piece is from my town, San Cristobal in los Andes in Venezuela.”
Arturo Márquez’s three-movement Concierto de Otoño was next, for which Flores played two different trumpets, a cornet, and a flugelhorn. In doing so, he exhibited marvelous sounds, whether playing longer notes or quick melodies.
The opening movement “Son de Luz” has dotted rhythms, and Guerrero ensured there was a good blend between trumpet and orchestra. It was especially interesting to hear the trumpet interact with the other brass instruments. For the slow, second movement “Balada de floripondios,” Flores switched to a lower-pitched instrument. It started with a melodic interplay with the violins and other strings.
When conducting, Guerrero’s hands tend to stay at neck level and higher. While the right hand is keeping the beat with a baton, the left is soothing and cajoling, even making fists occasionally. There appeared to be nice chemistry with Flores. During the finale, “Conga de flores,” Márquez wrote a couple of muffled trumpet passages that Flores directed to Guerrero, who smiled and offered quiet comments in return. For an encore, Flores and the orchestra played his own Lábios Vermelhos. Wonderful.
Following intermission, the concert ended with a work tailor-made for an outdoor setting, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D-Major, Titan. This symphony starts with a lengthy introduction that represents dawn. Woodwinds tweet bird calls, horns sound, and muffled trumpets play from offstage; ambient sounds made by real birds and car horns can fit right in. Even the helicopter overhead seemed appropriate. The shimmering effect of the sun setting on the year’s longest day added to the mood.
Guerrero managed the gradual crescendo very well, and the many interactions between different instruments were great. I also liked that he honored the repeat of the opening movement’s exposition. As is typical with Mahler, this symphony gets boisterous. Guerrero kept the opening a bit quieter than usual, which allowed later energy in the Coda to be more pronounced.
This performance of Mahler’s first symphony was special because it included “Blumine,” a fifth movement that Mahler originally placed second. Before starting the performance, Guerrero explained that Mahler included it in the symphony’s premier in Budapest in 1899, but discarded it after a few performances. “Blumine” is beautiful music, with a bucolic feel. However, even with this excellent performance it does feel out of place. I can see why Mahler removed it, but kudos to Guerrero for including it.
Overall, the performance was great, notwithstanding a couple of horn slips. Also, things seemed a bit off at the start of the rousing finale. The drag race taking place nearby didn’t help. Things quickly got back to normal, and total beauty emanated from the violins for the second theme. Every great performance of this symphony must have moving brass climaxes, and this one did.
Grant Park Festival continues this Wednesday, when Giancarlo Guerrero conducts the Grant Park Orchestra in Mozart’s Paris Symphony and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. He will be joined by the Imani Winds quintet for Valerie Coleman’s Phenomenal Women. Wednesday, June 25, 6:30 pm. For more information, click here.
This Friday and Saturday, Guerrero and the Orchestra returns for Augusta Read Thomas’s Brio, Richard Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. Friday, June 27, 6:30 pm, Saturday June 28, 7:30 pm. For more information, click here.