Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Energy, elegance, and spirit — these qualities particularly distinguish Andrés Orozco-Estrada as a musician. After a successful collaboration with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai in May 2022, he was appointed the new principal conductor of the Rai Orchestra beginning in the 2023–24 season. He celebrated the orchestra's 30th anniversary in October 2024 with two festive concerts in Turin.

In 2025–26 season, he will assume the positions of general music director for the City of Cologne, and music director of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne. Orozco-Estrada places great importance on inspiring all the people of Cologne with music and representing Cologne as a city of music on the international stage. In the 2024-25 season, a series of performances of Carmen marked his opera debut as general music director-designate.

At the beginning of the 2024–25 season, Orozco-Estrada debuted with performances of Le Nozze di Figaro at the Semperoper Dresden. Additional debuts took him to the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Seoul, and the Spanish National Orchestra (OCNE) in Madrid.

Orozco-Estrada has been re-invited to perform with esteemed ensembles such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestre National de France, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and the radio orchestras of SWR, WDR, and DSO Berlin. He also returned to the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, where he served as principal conductor from 2014 to 2021, and the Houston Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director from 2014 to 2022.

Born in Medellín, Colombia, Orozco-Estrada began his musical education as a violinist and received his first conducting lessons at the age of 15. In 1997, he moved to Vienna, where he was accepted into the conducting class of Uroš Lajovic, a student of the legendary Hans Swarowsky, at the renowned Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst.

Since October 2022, Orozco-Estrada has served as a professor of orchestral conducting at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts.