Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1977, Andrés Orozco-Estrada began his musical education by playing the violin, receiving his first conducting lessons at age 15. In 1997, he moved to Vienna to continue his studies, graduating from Uroš Lajovic’s conducting class at the University of Music and Performing Arts. His first conducting positions were as Music Director of Klosterneuburg Opera and Principal Conductor of the ensemble recreation — Grosses Orchester Graz, as well as of the Tonkünstler Orchestra in Lower Austria, which he helmed from 2009 to 2015. Orozco-Estrada led the hr-Sinfonieorchester in Frankfurt from 2014 to 2021; he was Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra from 2014 to 2022 and, from 2020 to 2022, Chief Conductor of the Vienna Symphony. In 2023, he became Principal Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai. At the beginning of the 2025-26 season, he takes over as General Music Director of Cologne, heading the city’s opera house and the Gürzenich Orchestra; a performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana will inaugurate his tenure. Orozco-Estrada has conducted such internationally renowned orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. Guest engagements in the 2024-25 season included with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Munich Philharmonic. As an opera conductor, he has worked at the Vienna and Berlin Staatsoper companies, among others; in 2024, he made his debut with Mozart’s Figaro at the Dresden Staatsoper and conducted Bizet’s Carmen in Cologne. Orozco-Estrada’s recordings include accounts of the complete symphonies of Brahms and Mendelssohn, as well as of works by Stravinsky, Strauss, and Wagner. Since 2022, he has been professor orchestral conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna.

Lucerne Festival debut on 5 September 2019 leading the Vienna Philharmonic in a program of works by Korngold and Dvořák.

March 2025