NC Symphony names next music director, and he has personal ties to the state
An internationally acclaimed conductor with “personal roots” in North Carolina will serve as the North Carolina Symphony’s next music director, the organization announced this week.
Carlos Miguel Prieto, who currently serves as artistic advisor for the North Carolina Symphony and has been a regular guest conductor for the organization since 2011, will begin his initial four-year term as music director with the symphony in the 2023-2024 season, the announcement said. He will serve the symphony as “music director designate” for the 2022-2023 season.
Prieto is known for his “charismatic conducting and expressive interpretations,” which have received critical acclaim throughout the Americas and Europe. He is renowned for championing Latin American music, as well as his dedication to new music.
Prieto was born into a family of musicians and grew up in Mexico City, but attended a summer camp on the North Carolina coast at the age of 10, where he learned English and “began a love affair with this gorgeous state,” he said in a statement accompanying the symphony’s announcement.
“I look forward to getting to know NC even better through the symphony’s many statewide tours and educational offerings,” Prieto said in the statement.
In the announcement of his appointment, North Carolina Symphony leaders highlighted Prieto’s decade-plus history with the organization and the “affinity” between him and the symphony’s musicians.
Prieto has also served as music director for the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, Mexico’s “most important orchestra,” the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería in Mexico City.
He has served as a guest conductor for orchestras and symphonies in Cleveland, Dallas, Toronto, Minnesota and Washington, and has developed “a particularly close and successful relationship” with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony.
In 2019, Prieto was named Musical America’s Conductor of the Year.
Founded in 1932, the North Carolina Symphony is the first state-supported symphony in the U.S., and is part of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The symphony is headquartered at Meymandi Concert Hall at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh.
The organization each year hosts 300 concerts, educational programs and community engagement events in more than 90 of North Carolina’s 100 counties. The symphony reachesapproximately 70,000 students each year through its various educational programs.
Prieto praised the organization’s engagement with North Carolina communities in his statement, saying the symphony “plays a central role in the life of its community, in a way I have rarely seen before.”
“I am honored to join this community and will help, in any way I can, bring the message of hope, joy and unity that music provides, at this critical time in our lives,” Prieto said.
