Other Media:

• Watch a short video of Giancarlo rehearsing.
• View a slide show of Guerrero in action.

External Links:

• Eugene Symphony home page
• Giancarlo's biography
• Adaptistration

Other Stories:

• Tom Bollag brings his style of five-star cuisine to Eugene through his Chef’s Kitchen.
• Linda Burden-Williams, an actress who lives in Veneta, teaches her students that acting is self-exploration.
• John Canzano gives the scoop about journalism, sports and life outside his Oregonian column.
• JR Gaddis, like his father and grandfather before him, knows a lot about printing.
• Giancarlo Guerrero is helping make magic every time he picks up the baton to lead the Eugene Symphony.
• Toby Hill-Meyer, a University of Oregon student, is an activist in the area of gender identity.
• Rick Hogue finds that salesmanship and guidance are the elements of success in financial consulting.
• Carl Hosticka juggles a university teaching position with a political career spanning 20 years.
• Bill Hunter's long journey has led him to satisfaction, working for the parks department in Eugene.
• Mona Lindstromberg has a lot to say about the land watch groups she’s involved in and development issues.
• Thaddeus Moore owns and operates Sprout City Studios, a recording studio in West Eugene.
• Lesley Neufeld, who has designed costumes for movies and television, now owns a boutique in Cottage Grove.
• Robert Parrish wouldn't give up after an educational setback, and in four months he will be a paramedic.
• Rick Pettigrew's Archaeology Channel is a well-visited Web site devoted to bringing archaeology to the masses.
• Catherine Reinhart has watched Sweet Life Patisserie grow from a small garage shop into a well-known bakery.
• Neal Zoumboukos, longtime offensive line coach, has been molding bodies and minds in Eugene for a quarter century.

A maestro makes magic continued

Stretching the limits

Peter Bergquist, a former University of Oregon music professor and now a part-time classical music reviewer for The Register-Guard, says that the technical demands of contemporary music force Guerrero and the players to stretch their limits.

“He inherited a good group and he’s maintaining and building on the standards that were already set,” Bergquist says. “It’s an attractive situation to come in and work with an orchestra and play some really challenging repertory.”

	Photo courtesy of the Eugene Symphony.

The combination of exciting new music and Guerrero’s gregarious nature is paying off at the box office. The symphony reports 19 percent growth in subscriptions over the last five years, and has an annual attendance of 22,000 to see 10 concerts – not bad for a community of about 140,000.

Winberg says he’s already worrying about the day Guerrero gets recruited by a bigger orchestra

“I think he will have a lot of great opportunities in his career," he says. "We understand that one of our roles is to help launch incredibly talented young conductors. But we’ll hold onto him as long as we can."

Drew McManus, the author of Adaptistration, an online magazine about orchestra management, says, “It’s a real catch-22. If he’s successful, he’s going to catch the eye of a better orchestra that can pay more and have better players.”

Both of Guerrero’s predecessors at the Eugene Symphony have moved on to bigger roles: Marin Alsop is now music director of the Colorado Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Royal Scottish National Symphony; Miguel Harth-Bedoya holds music directorships in Auckland, New Zealand, and Fort Worth, Texas, in addition to a prestigious associate position with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Guerrero says he’s content in Eugene.

Photo courtesy of the Eugene Symphony.

“Of course I want my career to go higher, but I love what I’m doing right now,” he says. “I’m getting to play with great players, with great soloists.”

Guerrero also is trying to achieve some balance with his busy guest conductor schedule. He has trips planned in the next month to Buenos Aires, New Zealand, Chicago, Costa Rica, Los Angeles and Europe. And he’s the father of two girls, ages 2 and 5. Guerrero keeps a home in Eugene, but uses Minneapolis as his home base. Due to the amount of travelling he does, he says he needs to be near a major airport hub.

Guerrero says he lives to wake up each morning and open a new piece of music, whether it is a Shostakovich piece he’s never read before or a premiere that’s never been played before.

“ I want to make sure that classical music is still a part of our lives 300 years from now,” he says.

He encourages young people to take up conducting and says they should play in an orchestra, watch great conductors and listen to lots of live performances.

In Eugene, audience members of all ages will be able to watch Guerrero tackle Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. Campbell says it is a challenging piece because of the massive size of the orchestra and the range demanded of the players, but performing Mahler also is a way to improve the orchestra and for Guerrero to “prove his mettle.”

	Photo by Jackson Holtz.

Lofty goals

By opening a Mahler score on the podium with baton in hand, Guerrero has big shoes to fill. World-renowned conductors like Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas have achieved fame for their interpretations of Mahler's complex scores.

While it's still too soon to tell if Guerrero will one day join the ranks of classical music icons, he certainly will go down as having influenced this generation of concertgoers in Eugene.

“I don’t consider what I do work,” he says. “For me going to rehearsal is the happiest day in my life.

“I have the greatest job on earth… I get to work with the greatest soloists, the greatest musicians in the greatest concert halls all over the world. It’s a dream job.”