Paolo Bortolameolli Named Phoenix Symphony's 12th Music Director, Replacing Tito Muñoz

Highlights

• Paolo Bortolameolli becomes the Phoenix Symphony's 12th music director, succeeding Tito Muñoz, who departed in 2024 after a decade.
• Bortolameolli, a native of Chile, first conducted the Phoenix Symphony two years ago and says he felt at home from the first rehearsal.
• He plans to program recognizable classics alongside Latin American composers and new works, calling season-building one of the most challenging aspects of the role.
• Season planning for his first full year is now underway, with programming decisions expected to reflect both audience taste and his own enthusiasm for lesser-known repertoire.

Paolo Bortolameolli will lead the Phoenix Symphony as its 12th music director, the orchestra confirmed, filling the post vacated by Tito Muñoz, who left in 2024 after a decade leading the ensemble.

Bortolameolli, who is from Chile and has conducted orchestras there and elsewhere, first appeared on the Phoenix podium two years ago. He told KJZZ's Mark Brodie that the connection was immediate: "I clicked with this orchestra from the very beginning. I felt at home two years ago when I came for the very first time and we did our first program together."

He returned to open a subsequent season — aware he was part of a music-director search — and described the experience not as audition pressure but as reconnecting with "a group of remarkable musicians."

On his artistic vision, Bortolameolli said his primary goal is energetic connection with audiences, describing the concert hall as a collective experience: "we are kind of like a big tribe, that we are sitting around a fire." He added that he sees his role as inseparable from the musicians around him: "I am not nobody without an orchestra."

Programming, he said, will balance the familiar with the unexpected. He cited an interest in choral repertoire, Latin American composers, and new music, while acknowledging the economic and audience-taste realities of building a season. "I understand that we have to read the taste of your community," he told Brodie, adding that pairing a known work with something unfamiliar can create what he called "an unexpected gift" for listeners. He also stressed that performance itself gives music its existence: "the music has to be played to exist."

The appointment has been corroborated by KJZZ, Phoenix New Times, and azcentral.

Season planning for Bortolameolli's first full year is now underway.

Sources

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1. phoenixsymphony.org retrieved 2026-05-06T08:11:33.174685+00:00

Authored by lily_ortega. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 2026-05-06T08:11:33.174685+00:00. Every claim traces to a source.