School of Music alumnus Germán Gutiérrez, M.M. ’91, has been selected as this year’s College of Fine Arts spring commencement speaker.
Gutiérrez has served as director of orchestras and professor of orchestral Studies at Fort Worth’s Texas Christian University (TCU) as well as director of TCU’s Latin American Music Center and biennial Latin American Music Festival since 1996. Since 2000 Gutiérrez has also served as music director of the Youth Orchestra of Greater Fort Worth (YOGFW).
Gutiérrez is a frequent guest conductor of professional orchestras in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. He recently recorded a CD with the Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra with Daniel Binelli and Polly Ferman as soloists. Recent invitations include the Shanghai Conservatory Symphony; Alcalá de Henares Symphony Orchestra, in Spain; the Lebanon National Philharmonic; the Orquesta Filarmónica of Bogotá, Colombia; the Perú National Symphony; the Hu Bei State Symphony of China; and the Free State Symphony Orchestra of South Africa.
In 2011 the TCU Symphony Orchestra received the Carlos Gardel Musical Prize for its CD Cantar Latinoamericano with Opus Cuatro as soloists. This award led to the invitation for the orchestra to perform in May 2013 in Buenos Aires and Rosario.
For the 12th consecutive year Gutiérrez served as guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony’s Hispanic Festival. In 2006 he was invited to conduct the Czech National Symphony in historic Smetana Hall as part of the 110th anniversary of Carl Orff’s birth, where he led the orchestra in a performance of Carmina Burana.
Gutiérrez has also appeared with the symphony orchestras of Shanghai (China), Xalapa and San Luis Potosí in Mexico, the Fort Worth Symphony, Auckland Philharmonic (New Zealand), Argentina, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Cuba National Symphonies, and Sinfónica del Teatro Municipal de Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra in Brazil, among others. In 2002, Maestro Gutiérrez was invited to the Trentino region of Italy to conduct Rossini’s Barber of Seville for the 30th anniversary of the Pergine Spettacolo Aperto.
Under his baton, the TCU Symphony and the YOGFW have achieved exceptional levels of recognition in Fort Worth and abroad. Both groups have traveled on numerous international tours, obtaining enthusiastic reviews, including repeat invitations as the featured orchestra to engagements such as the Iberoamerican Music Festival in Puerto Rico, and the Texas Music Educators Association Convention in San Antonio. With the TCU Symphony, Gutiérrez has also conducted the world premieres of more than twelve contemporary works. In 2017 Gutiérrez led the YOGFW on a tour of Europe that included performances at Salzburg’s Mozarteum, Eisenstadt’s Esterházy Palace in Austria, and a concert in Prague.
Gutiérrez holds Músico Bachiller and Maestro en Música degrees from the Tolima Conservatory in Colombia. He also received a master’s degree from Illinois State University and a doctoral degree from the University of Northern Colorado.
For his involvement and dedication to TCU, Gutiérrez received the Dean’s Teaching Award, the Dean’s Award for Research and Creative Activity, and the 2003 Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity, the highest award that TCU bestows.
He makes his home in Fort Worth with his wife, Silvia, and two sons, Nicolás and Gabriel.
Gutiérrez will give the spring 2018 commencement speech for the College of Fine Arts at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 12, in Braden Auditorium, located in the Bone Student Center.
