Carlos Miguel Prieto
Conductor
Known for his charisma and expressive interpretations, Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto has established himself not just as a major figure in the orchestra world but also as an influential cultural leader, educator, and a champion of new music. In a significant career development, he will start his tenure as Music Director of the North Carolina Symphony at the beginning of the 2023-24 season.
From 2007 to 2022, he was the Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, the country’s leading ensemble, and significantly raised the caliber of the orchestra. He is also Music Director of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra since 2006, where he helped lead the cultural renewal of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and will step down at the end of the 2022-23 season. In 2008, he was appointed Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, a hand-picked orchestra that performs a two-month series of summer programs in Mexico City.
Recent highlights include engagements with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Hallé, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Spanish National Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Strasbourg Philharmonic, and Auckland Philharmonia. Prieto is in demand as a guest conductor with many of the top North American orchestras, including Cleveland, Dallas, Toronto, Minnesota, Washington, New World, and Houston Symphony, and has enjoyed a particularly successful relationship with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony. Prieto makes his BBC Proms debut at Royal Albert Hall on August 5, 2023 with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.
Since 2002, alongside Gustavo Dudamel, Prieto has conducted the Orchestra of the Americas, which draws young musicians from the entire American continent. A staunch proponent of music education, Prieto served as Principal Conductor of the YOA from its inception until 2011 when he was appointed Music Director. In 2018 he conducted the orchestra on a tour of European summer festivals, which included performances at the Rheingau and Edinburgh festivals, as well as Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. He has also worked regularly with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the NYO2 in New York.
Prieto is renowned for championing Latin American music, as well as his dedication to new music. He has conducted over 100 world premieres of works by Mexican and American composers, many of which were commissioned by him. Prieto places equal importance on championing works by Black and African American composers such as Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Courtney Bryan, among others. Prieto has an extensive discography that includes the Naxos and Sony labels. Recent Naxos recordings include Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2 & Études tableaux Op.33, with Boris Giltburg and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra RSNO, which won a 2018 Opus Klassik award and was listed as a Gramophone’s Critics’ Choice; and his 2017 recording of Korngold’s Violin Concerto with violinist Philippe Quint and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería received two Grammy nominations. His recording of the Elgar and Finzi Violin Concertos with Ning Feng was released on Channel Classics in November 2018. Prieto was recognized by Musical America as the 2019 Conductor of the Year. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard universities, Prieto studied conducting with Jorge Mester, Enrique Diemecke, Charles Bruck and Michael Jinbo.