“Following an almost three-year search, the Santa Fe Symphony and Chorale has selected Guillermo Figueroa to be its principal conductor beginning with the 2016-17 season,” writes James M. Keller in The New Mexican on Monday (4/11). Figueroa’s contract is for three years. His podium debut as principal conductor will be a January 22 concert billed as “A New Year, a New Maestro.” Figueroa, 63, is music director of Music in the Mountains (Durango, Colo.) and of the Lynn Philharmonia at Lynn University Conservatory of Music (Boca Raton, Fla.). A former concertmaster at the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and New York City Ballet, he is “most familiar to audiences here through his position as music director of the Albuquerque-based New Mexico Symphony, which he led from 2000 until its bankruptcy and demise in 2011. After that, he founded The Figueroa Project, which produced concerts in Albuquerque.” Figueroa “was effectively selected by the 54 musicians who are tenured members of the Santa Fe Symphony, [Executive Director Gregory W.] Heltman said. ‘The musicians are responsible for the artistic governance of the orchestra, dependent on the board of directors as a whole being able to finance the direction of the organization.’ ”
Posted April 13, 2016
