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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n“Queen of the Night” at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, FL<\/p>\n
Once a year hundreds of people come out to Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, FL, to experience the elegance and beauty of the “Queen of the Night”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/story-highlights> After five years without a music director, the Sarasota Orchestra is welcoming a new artistic leader.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s seventh music director since its founding in 1949.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s such a huge thing for an orchestra to have a new music director,\u201d said Gordon Greenfield, the Orchestra\u2019s vice president of artistic planning. \u201cWe\u2019re just shaking with excitement.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Grant Park Music Festival. Critics have praised his \u201ccuratorial and interpretive creativity\u201d (Chicago Tribune<\/em>) and BachTrack, a classical music digital platform, called Guerrero’s style \u201cvigorous, passionate, and nuanced\u201d.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t even dare to sit down and write music,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cMy 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Guerrero also isn\u2019t afraid to challenge tradition in the concert hall.<\/p>\n He plans to invite Sarasota audiences to clap between movements \u2014 a custom that was common in Mozart\u2019s day but gradually fell out of favor in the 20th century.<\/p>\n \u201cSomewhere along the way, someone decided audiences should sit quietly until the very end,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cBut enthusiasm is part of the live performance. If listeners feel moved in the moment, they should be able to respond. It\u2019s about creating a direct connection between the music, the musicians, and the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n He intends to do that by speaking directly from the stage, sharing the backstories behind the music, and sometimes inviting the audience to participate \u2014 as he will during the season-opening ‘Discoveries’ concert, when listeners will \u201cclap it out\u201d to decide which Mozart movement they prefer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s part of making concerts feel alive again,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cThese composers we revere were human beings. They doubted themselves. They reworked things. That makes their art even more powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n Guerrero said the Discovery concerts aren\u2019t meant to be \u201cdumbed down\u201d but rather an invitation to see legendary composers as human beings, full of trial and error.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are the names everyone knows\u2014Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mahler\u2014but even they second-guessed themselves,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cBeethoven 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\u2019t sure which one audiences would like better. To me, that\u2019s the most powerful part of Discovery\u2014it shows that even our greatest geniuses struggled, and it makes the music feel more alive, more connected to us.\u201d<\/p>\n For Greenfield, Guerrero\u2019s arrival is a chance for Sarasota to hear the orchestra in a new light.<\/p>\n \u201cGiancarlo brings energy, warmth, and an international reputation,\u201d Greenfield said. \u201cBut more importantly, he brings a vision that will help Sarasota audiences fall in love with the music all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Giancarlo Guerrero takes the stage at Sarasota Orchestra<\/h3>\n