Alejandro Gómez Guillén, Music Director

Alejandro was exposed to a wide spectrum of music and musical styles while growing up singing in choirs and playing the violin in his native Colombia. Most recently he traveled to Germany and Italy to perform the B Minor Mass with Helmuth Rilling, and was one of the conductors chosen to conduct public concerts of the St. Matthew Passion at the Oregon Bach Festival. Alejandro is also passionate about his work with young musicians and this summer conducted the Encuentro Nacional de Orquestas Infantiles y Juveniles in Colombia and the Spokane Youth Symphony Sensational Summer Camp. Currently finishing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Orchestral Conducting under the tutelage of Gary Lewis, Alejandro also received a Dual Master’s degree in Violin Performance and Conducting at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In addition to directing Cantabile, Alejandro is the Associate Conductor of the University of Colorado at Boulder Campus Orchestra.

He was selected to conduct public performances of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and B minor Mass at the Oregon Bach Festival, and he played with the Festivalensemble Stuttgart at prestigious venues throughout Germany, including a European premiere of Sven-David Sandström’s Messiah at the Rheingau Music Festival, and concerts at the Berlin Philharmonie under the baton of Helmuth Rilling. In March of 2012, he will tour Italy with the Junges Stuttgarter Bach Ensemble of which he was concertmaster in 2011.

Born into a family of musicians, Alejandro began his musical studies under the direction of María Teresa Guillén and Julián Gómez. He studied violin with Jaime Guillén Martínez and Alfredo Hernández Becerra, and with renowned Suzuki pedagogue Olga Chamorro. He was a member and soloist of the Children’s Choir of Colombia and was enrolled in the Javeriana University pre-college music division in Bogota. He also studied conducting with Maestros Helmuth Rilling, Germán Gutiérrez, Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Nicholas Carthy. He has conducted the Javeriana Symphony Orchestra, the Spokane Youth Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, the CU Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, and has appeared as soloist with the Tolima Conservatory Symphony Orchestra and the Eastern Washington University Symphony.