Nashville calls on symphony's Guerrero.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

Giancarlo Guerrero is on his way to Music City.

Guerrero, music director and conductor of the Eugene Symphony, has accepted a job as music director of the Nashville Symphony in Nashville, Tenn. He begins his new job in 2009 after he completes his current contract in Eugene.

That's a big move up for the popular conductor, who came to the Eugene Symphony in 2002.

Eugene's orchestra is part time, playing about a dozen concerts each year. That means Guerrero, who lives in Minnesota with his family, commutes here for performances and fills out his schedule with guest conducting - a typical work life for small-city musicians.

By contrast, Nashville boasts a full-time, year-round orchestra, one of the most successful in the nation.

The symphony opened its own performance center, the $123 million Schermerhorn Symphony Center, one year ago; the center is named for Kenneth Schermerhorn, who conducted the symphony for 20 years before his death in 2005. The symphony does 200 performances a year and regularly records with Naxos.

So hot is the Nashville Symphony that the city hosted the annual convention of the American Symphony Orchestra League earlier this year.

"This is an orchestra that has become the example-setter for orchestras around the country," Guerrero said by phone Wednesday from Nashville, where the symphony was to make a formal announcement of his appointment today. "Every week there is something going on with the symphony - unlike Eugene, where I see the orchestra once a month. It's a fabulous, fabulous orchestra."

Guerrero, 38, has been a frequent guest conductor with the Nashville Symphony in recent years. When he became a serious candidate to replace Schermerhorn, he undertook a series of secret trips to Tennessee, meeting symphony staffers and board members away from the concert hall, where he might be recognized.

`We're very excited for Giancarlo,' said Eugene Symphony board president Mary Ann Hanson. `Nashville's decision to appoint Giancarlo as its new music director affirms Eugene Symphony's national reputation as a place where the best conducting talent is discovered and nurtured.'

Eugene Symphony Executive Director Paul Winberg said a search for a new conductor would get under way as quickly as possible. But given the amount of advance scheduling in the classical music world, it's possible the symphony could go into its 2009-10 season without a permanent conductor in place, he said.

The Eugene Symphony has done well in recent years in hiring young conductors on their way up. Marin Alsop, who was music director from 1989 to 1996, now conducts the Baltimore Symphony, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya, who preceded Guerrero, went from Eugene to the Fort Worth Symphony in Texas.

Guerrero's busy schedule in Nashville will curtail his guest conducting around the world.

"My kids are getting to be an age when I need to be home more," he said. "So I can afford now to be more selective about guest conducting."

He plans to move his family - he has a wife and two young children - from their home in Minnesota to Nashville sometime next summer.

Given Nashville's prominence as the world center of country music, it's no surprise that the symphony there draws on country talent for its pops series; the coming season includes appearances by LeAnn Rimes and John Prine.

Country music may remain a stretch for Guerrero, a former percussionist who is more likely to listen to heavy metal rock 'n' roll on his days off than to country western.

"I won't be buying a cowboy hat just yet," he said. "That's waaaaay down the road."