Giancarlo Guerrero
Giancarlo Guerrero Named Next Artistic Leader of Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival
The board of directors of the Grant Park Orchestral Association, producers of the annual Grant Park Music Festival in Millennium Park, today announced that Giancarlo Guerrero has been named the Festival’s Artistic Director and Principal Conductor. Guerrero, a six-time GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor, led the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus for three concerts during the 2024 season. He is currently completing a 16-year tenure as Music Director of the Nashville Symphony and is the Music Director Designate of Sarasota Orchestra. Guerrero will join the Festival effective immediately to program the concert schedule for the 10-week 2025 season in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, and is slated to conduct for four weeks next summer. The Festival has presented free classical concerts since 1935, and attracts hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans and visitors each year.
“We are thrilled to welcome Giancarlo Guerrero to Chicago to lead what is regarded as the United States’ most important free classical music institution,” said Paul Winberg, President and CEO of the Grant Park Orchestral Association. “Giancarlo is not only a brilliant conductor with a stellar reputation; he has a history of curating programs that are exciting, surprising and inventive. It is also clear that our musicians are tremendously excited about working with him, and that his concerts last summer sparked palpable energy from our audiences. It is a joy to listen to the music he conducts. The Grant Park Music Festival is highly anticipated by Chicagoans each year; we are confident that our future is in excellent hands with Giancarlo at the podium.”
Praised for his “viscerally powerful performances” (Boston Globe) and described as “at once vigorous, passionate, and nuanced” (BachTrack), Guerrero is one of the most respected orchestra conductors in the world, and will be the eighth person to lead the Festival. He succeeds Carlos Kalmar, who served in the position for 25 seasons, and will now hold the title of conductor laureate. Having made his Festival debut in 2008 and having conducted multiple concerts since, Guerrero is also familiar to Chicago audiences through his frequent guest-conducting appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
“From the moment I first walked onto the stage of the glorious Pritzker Pavilion, and looked out at the sea of people – a snapshot of the entire city of Chicago – it was immediately apparent what a gift the Grant Park Music Festival is to the community. In the heart of this vibrant downtown, in one of the most exciting cities in the world, here is a festival dedicated to orchestral music and designed to be enjoyed by everyone. The mission of the Festival aligns closely with my philosophy that music is meant to be enjoyed by people from all walks of life, without boundaries,” said Guerrero. “I felt such a natural, easy connection with these incredible musicians – including both the stellar orchestra and the spectacular chorus. I recognized sparks flying, musically speaking, from my first interactions with them from the podium. These musicians, hailing from orchestras and opera companies from the region and throughout the world, are really the best of the best.”
This summer, Guerrero stood at the podium to conduct two programs: the first featuring Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 5” on July 10, and the second featuring Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” and Maurice Duruflé’s “Requiem” (performed by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus) on July 12 and 13. Reviewing the Shostakovich program for the Chicago Tribune, Hannah Edgar praised Guerrero’s “curatorial and interpretive creativity” and added that his pre-performance remarks to the audience “provided context for both pieces… that mirrored his interpretation of the symphony: emphatic, practiced and assertive.” Recognizing that he might be a candidate to replace Kalmar, Edgar concluded that “Guerrero will have no problem leaving his mark.”
Festival concertmaster Jeremy Black also lauded Guerrero’s leadership of the orchestra, saying, “it was clear Giancarlo established a genuine rapport with the orchestra, and his energy and vision for the music was palpable on stage. I remember that one of my orchestra colleagues remarked, ‘he lit a fire under us!’ The musicians in the orchestra and chorus immediately knew that we were working with a superb musician who can inspire us to perform at the highest level.”
“The Grant Park Music Festival attracted hundreds of thousands of guests during our recently concluded summer season,” added Adam Grais, Board Chair of the Grant Park Orchestral Association. “Not only do our concerts attract dedicated music lovers and introduce thousands of young people to classical music, we also present some of the world’s most esteemed musicians on the Pritzker Pavilion stage. Concertgoers tell me that the Festival is one of the things they most love about Chicago, and Giancarlo possesses the talent, relationships, vision and drive to lead our organization to even greater accomplishments in the future.”