Grant Park Music Festival’s New Artistic Director and Principal Conductor: Giancarlo Guerrero

In Tuesday’s (10/1) Chicago Tribune, Hannah Edgar writes, “The Grant Park Music Festival has announced that outgoing Nashville Symphony music director Giancarlo Guerrero will succeed Carlos Kalmar as its next artistic director and principal conductor…. Guerrero was formally sworn in by a unanimous board vote on Sept. 23. The vote concluded a three-year search for Kalmar’s successor, spearheaded by a committee of musicians and board members. Kalmar, the festival’s principal conductor since 2000 and artistic director since 2011, remains … as its conductor laureate…. Next season, [Guerrero] takes the helm of the Sarasota Orchestra, whose stature he hopes to raise in much the same way he rocket-powered the Nashville Symphony. He also remains an in-demand guest conductor … During his fruitful 16-year tenure in Nashville, Guerrero commissioned some two dozen works by living American composers and released a slew of successful recordings … which, to date, have won 11 Grammy Awards. That résumé line plays especially well with the Grant Park Music Festival, a free classical music series that plays annually during the summer … in Millennium Park. The festival … just wrapped its 90th season…. ‘Everyone agreed this is the perfect person…,’ says festival president and CEO Paul Winberg.”