Giancarlo Guerrero has a favorite piece of music. It’s not Beethoven’s 5th Symphony or Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos or even Tom Sawyer by his beloved Rush. For Guerrero, who is stepping into his first season as the full-time Music Director of the Sarasota Orchestra in 2025, his favorite piece of music is whatever is in front of him on the conductor’s stand at that given moment. Born in Nicaragua, the Costa Rican conductor has established himself as one of the top names in classical music, winning six Grammy awards and has held titles such as the music director of the Nashville Symphony and the Wroclaw Philharmonic. Guerrero is an advocate for contemporary composers, having premiered over two dozen new works with the Nashville Orchestra, and looks to bring an unbridled enthusiasm and joy to Sarasota as he leads the Orchestra into a new era.
What excites you about your new role as Music Director of the Sarasota Orchestra? GIANCARLO GUERRERO What immediately impressed me when I arrived was the quality of the musicians. It’s what I noticed when I had my first rehearsal with them as a guest conductor and it has been reaffirmed with every single one of my visits since then. I’m excited about working with the Orchestra itself, working with the musicians, rehearsing and conducting concerts which are going to be the larger part of my duties. More than just the opportunity to spend more time in Sarasota—which I’ve come to love, the city and community as a whole—is the chance to make music with these incredible musicians. To put together amazing concerts and musical experiences for our community and continue to build our audience and get people excited about everything that the Sarasota Orchestra does in and around the community.
Is there a certain standard of music that you feel a responsibility to uphold or even raise in your position at Sarasota Orchestra? It’s every rehearsal. I don’t say that about the musicians, I say that about myself. Even though we do bring in guest conductors to work with the Orchestra throughout the season, as music director, I’m pretty much in charge of most of the season myself. The musicians and I are going to be working together a lot, doing very different repertoire, whether it’s new repertoire from the 21st century or war horses from the 19th or 20th century. Being a music director is like being the coach of a football team or a soccer team, you’re basically flexing the muscle every rehearsal, every week and you’re continuously working on improving the Orchestra. At the same time the musicians and myself are getting to know each other better. At first, I want to be talking to and communicating musically with the Orchestra, but at one point it’ll be completely natural and that’s where the real fireworks begin. When we can communicate in a telepathic sense and make music in a very magical way, not only in rehearsals, but more importantly in performances.
How do you reach that point of near telepathic communication with your musicians? Like anything, it just takes time. The best analogy I can use is that of being a coach coming to a new team. There’s a process of getting to know each other, but from the very beginning with the Sarasota Orchestra the chemistry was already there, which was so unique. It’s very important, because you cannot invent that chemistry—it’s either there or it’s not—and it just happened magically. The biggest reason for it is because the Orchestra is so good. The musicians are so well trained and eager to continue growing. As a music director, that’s music to my ears. Pardon the pun, but from that perspective I’m able to shape and hopefully continue to inspire them to reach higher artistic levels. I always say that being on that podium is the best seat in the house. You can do all of the rehearsals, but in the end you want to have that ability to let things spontaneously happen in performances. Even in our few concerts together, I’ve already seen that happen and can tell that our bond is getting stronger every day.
What is the hallmark of your style as a conductor? First and foremost, I’m a musician. For me, it’s about presenting warhorse works whether it’s a Beethoven or Mozart symphony or a tone poem by Richard Strauss, pieces that our audiences and classical music aficionados would connect with. I always try to present these pieces under a new light. Even if we “know” this music, every performance is unique. Hopefully when you come to the Sarasota Orchestra this season, you’ll hear those pieces through a different prism, with different eyes and ears in a new environment with a new conductor. Imagine you see a painting at a museum that you love and you go back to see it a few years later and all of a sudden the painting looks different to you. It’s because you’re a different person. It’s exactly the same thing with music—you might hear the same piece, but in a different city, with a different community, with a different conductor and suddenly you’re falling in love with it all over again. That’s very important to me.
How has the way that people listened to music changed? You have to remember that we’re playing this music in a different time. It’s 2025 and orchestras don’t play the way that they did 50 years ago. Instruments have gotten better, concert halls have gotten bigger and orchestras have grown. There has been an evolution of how this music is performed and hopefully it will keep happening. My wife may be sitting next to me, but she’s hearing something completely different than what I am. My job as a musician is just to present it in the best way that I can and then everybody individually assesses what this music means to them. That is the most important part of the live performance—you don’t know how you’re going to react to it in a moment in time. There is an adventure aspect to a live performance.
What do you listen to on your own time? I listen to heavy metal and rock. If you get in my car it’s going to be Ozzy and Iron Maiden, but I’m a little more of a progressive. I like Rush, Rush is the greatest band in the universe. I like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, I like the Beatles, I like jazz, I like salsa, I like everything. To me, music is oxygen. I need it.