Guillermo
Figueroa is
Artistic Director of The Figueroa Project, an innovative organization that
combines music with various other art forms. He is
also Music Director of
the Music in the Mountains Festival
in Durango, Colorado and is the former Music Director of both the New Mexico Symphony and the Puerto Rico Symphony. With
this last orchestra he
performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall in 2003, the Kennedy Center in 2004 and Spain in 2005.
His international appearances as a Guest Conductor include the Toronto
Symphony, Iceland Symphony, the Baltic Philharmonic in Poland, Orquesta
del Teatro Argentino in La Plata (Buenos Aires), Xalapa
(Mexico), the Orquesta de Cordoba in Spain
and the Orquesta Sinfonica de Chile.
In the US he has
appeared with the symphony orchestras of Detroit, New
Jersey, Memphis, Phoenix,
Colorado, Berkeley, Tucson, Santa Fe, Toledo, Fairfax, San Jose, Juilliard Orchestra and the New York City Ballet
at Lincoln Center.
Mr. Figueroa has
collaborated with many of the leading artists of our time, including Itzhak
Perlman, YoYo Ma, Hilary Hahn, Placido Domingo, Joshua Bell, Olga Kern, Janos
Starker, James Galway, Midori, Horacio Gutierrez, the Emerson and Fine Arts
String Quartets, Ben Hepner, Rachel Barton Pine, Pepe and Angel Romero, Elmar
Oliveira, Vadim Gluzman and Arnaldo Cohen.
A Berlioz specialist, he
created the most comprehensive Berlioz Festival in
the US in 2003 for the composer’s Bicentennial. Mr. Figueroa has conducted the
premieres of works by important composers, such as Roberto Sierra, Ernesto
Cordero and Miguel del Águila. An advocate for new music, Mr. Figueroa and
the NMSO won an Award for Adventurous Programming from the League of American
Orchestras in 2007.
A renowned violinist as
well, Figueroa was Concertmaster of the New York City Ballet, and a Founding
Member and Concertmaster of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, making over fifty recordings for Deutsche
Grammophon.
Figueroa has given the
world premieres of four violin concertos written for him: in 1995 the Concertino by Mario Davidovsky, at Carnegie
Hall with Orpheus; in 2007 the Double Concerto by Harold
Farberman, with the American Symphony at Fisher Hall,
Lincoln Center; in 2008 the Violin Concerto by
Miguel del Aguila, commissioned by Figueroa and the NMSO and in 2009 Insula, Suite Concertante, by
Ernesto Cordero with the Solisti di Zagreb in
Zagreb.
He is a regular
performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Music in the Vineyards in California, and Music from Angel Fire.
Figueroa has recorded the Three Violin Sonatas by Bartok
for the Eroica Classical label, with pianist Robert Koenig, and an album of
virtuoso violin music by for the NMSO label, with pianist Ivonne Figueroa.
Mr. Figueroa studied with his father and uncle at the Conservatory of Music of
Puerto Rico. At the Juilliard School his teachers were Oscar Shumsky and Felix
Galimir. His conducting studies were with Harold Farberman
in New York.
