After five years without a music director, the Sarasota Orchestra is welcoming a new artistic leader.
Giancarlo Guerrero, a six-time Grammy Award-winning conductor full of fresh energy and known internationally for his adventurous programming, officially steps onto the podium this fall as the Orchestra’s seventh music director since its founding in 1949.
“It’s such a huge thing for an orchestra to have a new music director,” said Gordon Greenfield, the Orchestra’s vice president of artistic planning. “We’re just shaking with excitement.”
The appointment ends a long period of transition. The orchestra has been without permanent leadership since the death of Bramwell Tovey, who was selected as music director but passed away unexpectedly in 2022.
Guerrero, 56, comes to Sarasota after a 16-season tenure with the Nashville Symphony and posts with major orchestras around the world. He also serves as artistic director of Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival. Critics have praised his “curatorial and interpretive creativity” (Chicago Tribune) and BachTrack, a classical music digital platform, called Guerrero’s style “vigorous, passionate, and nuanced”.
Giancarlo Guerrero takes the stage at Sarasota Orchestra
In an interview with the Herald Tribune ahead of the Sarasota Orchestra’s new season in mid-September, Guerrero described his role as both conductor and connector.
“I don’t even dare to sit down and write music,” he said with a laugh. “My role is to champion their music. I want audiences to feel a direct connection not only to me and the musicians, but to the composers themselves.”
Guerrero also isn’t afraid to challenge tradition in the concert hall.
He plans to invite Sarasota audiences to clap between movements — a custom that was common in Mozart’s day but gradually fell out of favor in the 20th century.
“Somewhere along the way, someone decided audiences should sit quietly until the very end,” Guerrero said. “But enthusiasm is part of the live performance. If listeners feel moved in the moment, they should be able to respond. It’s about creating a direct connection between the music, the musicians, and the audience.”
He intends to do that by speaking directly from the stage, sharing the backstories behind the music, and sometimes inviting the audience to participate — as he will during the season-opening ‘Discoveries’ concert, when listeners will “clap it out” to decide which Mozart movement they prefer.
“It’s part of making concerts feel alive again,” Guerrero said. “These composers we revere were human beings. They doubted themselves. They reworked things. That makes their art even more powerful.”
Guerrero said the Discovery concerts aren’t meant to be “dumbed down” but rather an invitation to see legendary composers as human beings, full of trial and error.
“These are the names everyone knows—Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mahler—but even they second-guessed themselves,” Guerrero said. “Beethoven rewrote his overture four times. Mahler pulled an entire movement out of his First Symphony. Mozart actually drafted two different versions of the same slow movement because he wasn’t sure which one audiences would like better. To me, that’s the most powerful part of Discovery—it shows that even our greatest geniuses struggled, and it makes the music feel more alive, more connected to us.”
For Greenfield, Guerrero’s arrival is a chance for Sarasota to hear the orchestra in a new light.
“Giancarlo brings energy, warmth, and an international reputation,” Greenfield said. “But more importantly, he brings a vision that will help Sarasota audiences fall in love with the music all over again.”
The Sarasota Orchestra celebrated its 75th anniversary last year in 2024. As the Orchestra prepares for its 76th season, the milestone is complemented by Guerrero, who has plans to help integrate the history of the orchestra into the musical community and performing arts sector in the Sarasota region.
“This is a new era,” Greenfield said. “And we couldn’t be more ready for it.”
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Meet Giancarlo Guerrero: Sarasota Orchestra’s new music director takes the podium
Reporting by Samantha Gholar, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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