Following a two-year search, the Sarasota Orchestra has announced its next music director: six-time Grammy Award-winning conductor Giancarlo Guerrero.

Guerrero, 55, who first conducted the orchestra here in concerts last January, will be the music director designate in the 2024-25 season before fully transitioning into the role of music director in fall 2025. A native of Nicaragua who grew up in Costa Rica, Guerrero will also serve his 16^th and final year as music director of the Nashville Symphony this season, before transitioning to a music director emeritus role there. He will continue to guest conduct internationally as well.

In a Zoom interview, Guerrero said that before coming to conduct here last season as a guest, “I knew the orchestra only by reputation, from colleagues who had worked with and spoke very highly of the orchestra. But from the very first moment I gave the first downbeat at the first rehearsal, I felt a special connection, a magic with the players. That’s not always a sure thing. There’s a lot of chemistry to what we do. I often say that conducting is the only proof we have that telepathy exists.”

In addition to preparing and performing those concerts, Guerrero says he also spent time getting to know “the rest of the Sarasota Orchestra family and city as well. There is a very clean and unified vision of what they wanted in the future. The proof is the new music center that’s being planned. That’s a big and ambitious project. My wife and I were chatting on the plane home, about if the orchestra were to ask me [to become music director], I would definitely consider it.”

While Guerrero will remain in Nashville for the time being, as his youngest daughter continues her education there, he will spend more time here getting to know the orchestra’s past as well as plan for its future. In addition to working toward the music center’s fruition, his role as music director will include “making time to work with student musicians, at every level,” Guerrero says. “It’s absolutely imperative for those of us who are fortunate to make a career of music to inspire others. Costa Rica and Nicaragua are not great meccas of classical music, and yet, here I am. I was given an opportunity. These students may go into other businesses, but they will always remember how music touched them, so we are nurturing the next generation of music lovers as well.”

That nurturing also means supporting new music and new composers. “Mozart had world premieres; so did Beethoven,” Guerrero says. “That music was considered revolutionary and new. Now we can’t imagine our lives without them. I became a musician because of Brahms and Beethoven and others, but if that was all of my life it would be very boring. I need to champion those writing music today. When you hear a Beethoven piece after you play a new piece by John Adams or Jennifer Higdon, the Beethoven sounds new again. And the living composers today will become the Beethovens and Mozarts of tomorrow.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Baylor University and a master’s degree from Northwestern University, Guerrero served as music director of the Tachira Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela, associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra and music director of the Eugene Symphony. He has also collaborated with top ensembles in North America including the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra, among others. Internationally, he has maintained longstanding relationships with orchestras in Europe, Latin America and Australia/New Zealand. He also recently completed a six-season tenure as music director of the NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic in Poland.

Guerrero’s initial contract with the Sarasota Orchestra is for a six-year period that includes the designate season. In the press release announcing his appointment, Orchestra president and CEO Joseph McKenna said, “Giancarlo’s exceptional talent and esteemed reputation will significantly enhance our orchestra’s standing among the world’s most prestigious ensembles. His visionary leadership, coupled with a fervent commitment to community advocacy, will be critical in further establishing Sarasota as a thriving center for classical music excellence. Giancarlo will also guide our organization into an exciting future as the visionary leader for our Music Center.”

Area audiences will next have a chance to hear Guerrero conduct during the orchestra’s Masterworks 1, Nov. 8-10, conducting a program of music by Tchaikovsky, Respighi and American composers Adolphus Hailstork and Jennifer Higdon. He will return to conduct Masterworks 4 Jan. 30-Feb. 2, 2025. He is the seventh music director in the orchestra’s 70-plus-year history.