Shortly after 7 p.m. on Sept. 13, conductor Giancarlo Guerrero will walk onstage at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, give the Nashville Symphony Orchestra its downbeat and usher in a new musical era. Following a search that lasted more than two years, NSO officials announced Wednesday that Guerrero has been appointed the orchestra’s new music director. The 38-year-old Costa Rican maestro, who officially starts his new job at the beginning of the 2009-10 season, succeeds longtime NSO Music Director Kenneth Schermerhorn, who died in April 2005.
“The orchestra and I have been talking about this for some time, so it feels good to finally be able to talk about it publicly,” says Guerrero, who’s in town this week to prepare for his first concert as the next music director. “And I can already tell you what we’re going to do—we’re going to become the next great American orchestra.”Earlier this year, there was some speculation that the position might go to Leonard Slatkin, the NSO’s music adviser and current conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. But Slatkin is reportedly eyeing a post at the helm of the Detroit Symphony. He will end his affiliation with the NSO at the end of the 2008-09 season.Currently the music director of Oregon’s Eugene Symphony, Guerrero has been a rising star in America’s classical music scene for the past several years. He recently conducted the Cleveland Orchestra, substituting at the last minute for Lorin Maazel in a daunting program of orchestral music from Wagner’s Ring Cycle. (Guerrero made such a strong impression that he was immediately reengaged to conduct that premium orchestra both at its home in Severance Hall and on tour.) Moreover, Guerrero led the Australian premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar—one of the most talked about contemporary works. Over the past two years, Guerrero has conducted the NSO in four programs. He established his front-runner status for the Nashville music director post immediately after Schermerhorn’s death.“I first conducted the orchestra the week after Kenneth Schermerhorn died, and when I first got here everybody was very sad and depressed,” says Guerrero. “That was a tough week, but I told everybody that the best way for us to get through this was to make the concert a celebration of Kenneth’s life. By the end of the week the musicians and I had developed a lot of chemistry.”“Giancarlo was exactly the conductor we needed after Kenneth died,” says Alan Valentine, the NSO’s president. “He went on to prove he was the perfect conductor to become our music director. His performance at our season finale [in May] was so fantastic that we all but decided to stop our search right then and there. He ended up getting the unanimous vote of our 12-member search committee.”Born in 1969, Guerrero spent his early years in Nicaragua, growing up in what he now describes as a very unmusical household. His family fled to Costa Rica following the Sandinista revolution in 1980. Once there, the young Guerrero soon revealed his musical talent.“Unlike Nicaragua, Costa Rica didn’t have an army, so the government invested its money in culture instead,” says Guerrero. “My father, who was an agricultural engineer, decided I was musical, probably because I could carry a tune and he couldn’t. He enrolled me in the youth orchestra, and I’ve been performing with orchestras ever since.”After high school, Guerrero went to Baylor University in Texas to major in percussion. He says whacking the timpani and xylophone proved to be perfect training for a conductor. “I know how to hold a stick, and I have good rhythm,” he says.Guerrero’s ample technique was on display during his performance with NSO in May. Conducting with big, sweeping, clear and ebullient gestures, Guerrero led the orchestra in a program of precipitous difficulty. The musicians, who were clearly connecting with this maestro throughout the evening, responded with performances that were as warmly passionate as they were expertly calibrated.That concert demonstrated his skill and clinched his new job. But it also provided insight into the kind of concerts we’ll likely be hearing in the coming years.A self-professed romantic, Guerrero has a penchant for big, splashy, prismatic works, such as the Respighi The Pines of Rome that concluded his concert. He also professes a passion for Beethoven and Mahler (the two composers who most move his soul), and for Mozart (the one composer who always makes him smile).But Guerrero also has a strong interest in contemporary music, most likely resulting from his percussion background. (Percussion didn’t come into its own in classical music until the 20th century, so percussionists are invariably drawn to modern music.) Guerrero names John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon and Aaron Jay Kernis (Americans all) as his favorite contemporary composers. He also enjoys the music of Michael Daugherty, whose Deus ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra received a bracing rendition at the NSO’s season finale.“We see playing contemporary American music as part of our mission,” Valentine says. “So Giancarlo’s love of that music was important to us.”Guerrero says he plans to live in Nashville with his wife and two daughters (a remarkable commitment in this age of aloof, jet-setting maestros). So Nashvillians will have plenty of chances to see this conductor in action. He’s certainly a pleasure to watch.A gifted showman, Guerrero can be every bit as flamboyant in his podium style as the late Leonard Bernstein. Still, he says the best thing about his technique is that it’s clear and easy to follow. He also insists there’s more to conducting than just counting time.“Conducting is really a mystery, and the best conductors can actually get musicians to read their minds,” he says. “So conducting is proof positive that telepathy really does exist.”
