Biography
GMD of the City of Cologne and Gürzenich-Kapellmeister
Chief Conductor Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai
With his trademark charismatic energy and elegance Andrés Orozco-Estrada has quickly established himself amongst the top league of international conductors, inspiring musicians and audiences alike.
At the start of the 2025/26 season he is taking over as general Music Director of the City of Cologne and as Kapellmeister of the Gürzenich Orchestra. In his inaugural season he is focusing on the orchestra’s Romantic tradition – in the course of its history the orchestra has given many important world premieres of works by Brahms, Mahler and Richard Strauss.
At the Cologne Opera he will be conducting performances of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, among other works. At the same time he is continuing his work with the Kronberg Academy and helping to promote the careers of young and talented musicians in Cologne through an international competition for composers.
Since the start of the 2023/24 season Andrés Orozco-Estrada has been Principal Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI in Turin and will be touring Spain with them in November 2025.
During the next season, his engagements will take him beyond Cologne and Turin to concert halls all over the world, where he will be working with many eminent international artists.
Andrés Orozco-Estrada made his Tanglewood Festival debut this summer and returned to the Lucerne Festival. He was also Artist in Residence at the Rheingau Music Festival, where he presented three different programmes.
Other guest appearances during the season include concerts with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. He will additionally be conducting the New Year’s Eve Concert with the Dresden Staatskapelle, which will be broadcast live on German television.
Andrés Orozco-Estrada was Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra between 2014 and 2022, Principal Conductor of the hr (Hesse Radio) Symphony Orchestra from 2014 to 2021 and Principal Conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 2020 to 2022.
Among the international opera houses where he has appeared are the Vienna, Berlin and Dresden State Operas and La Scala, Milan, while the leading orchestras that he has conducted include the Berlin, Vienna, London and New York Philharmonics as well as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and, in Asia, the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.
Andrés Orozco-Estrada was born in Medellín in Colombia and began studying the violin in his early youth, switching to conducting at the age of fifteen. In 1997 he began a course of study at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, where he has been professor of orchestral conducting since 2022.