- November 7, 2025
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Was it coincidence that the Sarasota Orchestra revealed the architect’s renderings for the massive new Music Center that it’s building near the intersection of Interstate 75 and Fruitville Road about a week before its new music director, Giancarlo Guerrero, conducts the monumental Masterworks program, “Symphonic Dances”?
As they used to say back in the Bard’s day, me thinks not.
Guerrero, a Grammy award-winning conductor who spent 16 seasons with the Nashville Symphony, is starting his first season as music director of the Sarasota Orchestra.
Last season, his title was music director designate. He was in and out of town, conducting the orchestra, programming future seasons and meeting with patrons, donors and members of the youth orchestra.
This season, Guerrero is really here. He and his wife have sold their house in Nashville and are now full-time Florida residents. Although he spends a great deal of time in Sarasota, Guerrero is based in Miami.
“It’s easy to get in and out of Miami. I save a lot of time. It’s golden,” explains Guerrero, who was in Chicago this summer for his first year as music director of the Grant Park Music Festival. He will also conduct concerts in Nashville, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Berlin during the coming season.
Perhaps he and his wife will buy a home in Sarasota, which he calls “a unique and special place” that’s “only a short drive from Miami.” But for now there’s a Music Center to be built. (They like capital letters in the arts world and who are we to quibble?)
According to Guerrero, this experience will be life-changing — for him, the Orchestra, the city of Sarasota, the state of Florida and the global music world.
“Everything has to do with new Music Center,” the new maestro says. “Everyone is preparing for the moment when the orchestra moves into its new home. Overnight the orchestra will become a new institution and it will change Sarasota.”
The total cost of the new Music Center will be between $375 million and $425 million. The Sarasota Orchestra has received a two-part gift of $60 million from an anonymous donor and a $10 million gift from Jack and Priscilla Schlegel.
During a video interview from his Miami condo, it’s apparent that Guerrero sees his role as ambassador for the new Music Center, a job he calls “main cheerleader.”
“I know what I want for this orchestra and that requires the support of the community,” he says. “I meet with people who want to be part of the project and talk about how it impacts the community.”
Some of those conversations happen over coffee or lunch, Guerrero says, and they don’t necessarily take place in Sarasota.”There are people who may want to be part of this who are not even in Sarasota,” he says.
A native of Nicaragua who was raised in Costa Rica, Guerrero is only the seventh music director in the history of the Sarasota Orchestra, founded in 1949 as the Florida West Coast Symphony. One of those music directors, who will go unnamed, got a reputation for being an absentee conductor because they spent so much time on the road.
Guerrero shrugs off the implied criticism of a predecessor, noting that a peripatetic life is part and parcel of being a professional musician today. Nevertheless, he allows that it’s essential to “have tentacles in the community.”
Despite his out-of-town engagements, Guerrero says he is firmly focused on Sarasota. This season, he will conduct six of seven Masterworks concerts (one is technically a “mini” Masterwork), two of three Discoveries performances and a “side-by-side” concert of the professional orchestra and its youth arm.
The first Discoveries concert of the season, “Hidden Treasures,” took place Oct. 4 at the Sarasota Opera House and was conducted by Guerrero. Next up is the first Masterworks concert, dubbed “Symphonic Dances” because it includes Rachmaninoff’s final composition. It takes place Nov. 7-9 at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.
Also on the bill of “Symphonic Dances” are Tchaikovsky’s demanding Piano Concert No. 1, which will be played by guest soloist Alessio Bax, and Jennifer Higdon’s ethereal “blue cathedral.” The latter is near and dear to Guerrero because he has promoted Higdon’s works and because the piece’s performance was postponed last season.
After Milton rampaged through Sarasota on Oct. 9, 2024, and flooding closed down the Van Wezel until the new year, the Masterworks concert, “Going Places,” was moved to the Sarasota Opera House Nov. 7-9. It was originally to have been conducted by Rune Bergmann, who stepped aside after Guerrero was named music director designate in August 2024.
“Blue cathedral is very personal to me,” Guerrero says. “I’ve championed Jennifer over many years. The piece is dedicated to her brother, who was a clarinet player who died of melanoma. She was a flute player. One of the most moving parts is the voice of clarinet ascending.”
The orchestral composition creates a celestial mood with instruments such as Chinese reflex bells and glass-filled crystal glasses, which produce a ringing sound when they are tapped. Guerrero says that “blue cathedral” will include a “show and tell” to help the audience understand what is happening.
Guerrero also has a personal connection to Bax, since both made their New York Philharmonic debut in October 2021 with a concert called “Brahms and the Schumanns.” He calls Bax’s performance of Tchaikovsky in the upcoming Masterworks concert a “a happy accident” since they share a love of the Russian composer’s works.
Part of what a music director does involves tapping their contacts to find artists who will perform selected works two or three years from now.
For a concert, Guerrero estimates that he spends 10% of his time conducting and the other 90% studying.
With the recent departure of Jeffrey Kahane as music director of the Sarasota Music Festival, Guerrero says he will be involved in planning the festival, which he describes as “one of the great jewels of Sarasota.”
A summer program of the Sarasota Orchestra, the Sarasota Music Festival has been bringing together internationally recognized faculty members and pre-professional musicians, known as fellows, for 61 years.
Besides the Music Center, nothing is more important to Guerrero than the upcoming side-by-side concert on Feb. 22 by the Sarasota Orchestra and the Youth Philharmonic, the most advanced of the eight Sarasota Youth Orchestras.
“I came into music through a youth orchestra,” Guerrero explains. “Music education is close to my heart. The Music Center is not just a symphony hall; it’s a campus for youth education.”
The maestro says that playing his first side-by-side concert was instrumental in his decision to pursue a career as a musician. “It was a great education to watch the hard work, discipline and sacrifice of the orchestra. It confirmed that this was what I wanted to do in my life,” he says.
The adults in the Sarasota Orchestra and members of the Youth Philharmonic will spend an entire weekend together, Guerrero says, preparing for the concert featuring Borodin’s Polovtsian Dance No. 17 and Hanson’s Symphony No. 2.
“We’ll be rehearsing, talking between rehearsals, sharing pizzas and then coming in and playing this concert,” Guerrero says. "This is the future of classical music.”
It sounds like a lot will be riding on those pizzas.
