Gonzalo Farias: Sharing his gifts

Gonzalo Farias returns to conduct the score of another popular and meaningful film.

Chilean conductor Gonzalo Farias is no stranger to conducting beloved animated movies in concert. Last season, he made his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut conducting Disney and Pixar’s Coco live to film. He has led The Princess Bride in Concert with the Kansas City Symphony, where he served as Associate Conductor. And now Farias, currently Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony, returns to Lyric for another modern classic, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Encanto. Released in 2021, the film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and multiple Grammy Awards for its vibrant soundtrack, which blends original songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame with an orchestral score by lauded composer Germaine Franco.

Farias rightly describes conducting films with a live orchestra as a unique art, “one that combines the precision of synchronization with the expressive power of live music.” He follows an in-ear click track to keep the orchestra synchronized with the onscreen animation while also preserving the musical spontaneity of live performance. “The challenge — and the joy — comes in rediscovering the human side of music-making within these strict parameters,” he says. “That is what transforms the experience beyond what you hear in a cinema: a live orchestra restores nuance, color, and vitality to the storytelling.”

Like the score to Coco, which Franco co-wrote with Michael Giacchino, Encanto’s soundtrack is rooted in the traditional music and instruments of the film’s setting. Franco tapped into her Mexican heritage for Coco, which follows a Mexican boy who dreams of playing guitar despite his family’s ban on music. For Encanto, set in the mountains of Colombia, Franco sought the expertise of Colombian musicians and immersed herself in the country’s culture, literature, and music to try to capture its sound world with authenticity. The resulting score draws from various Colombian musical genres, including bambuco, vallenato, and cumbia, and integrates traditional folk instruments such as the marimba de chonta, accordion, tiple, bandola, and arpa llanera.

Experiencing one’s heritage through music resonates deeply with Farias. “Music has always been my way of connecting with my own Chilean roots — of understanding myself through heritage, memory, and culture,” he says. The traditional instruments used in the scores of Coco and Encanto are not merely decorative, he notes. Rather, “they are storytellers, carrying the voices and emotions of generations.”

“What connects Encanto and Coco for me is how deeply music is woven into each family’s story,” Farias said. “In Coco, music carries memory and keeps us connected to people we’ve lost. In Encanto, it gives voice to feelings the family hasn’t always been able to express: the pressure of expectations, the desire to be seen, and the need to be loved for who you are, beyond what you can do for others. As a conductor, I find both deeply moving.”

Born in Santiago, Chile, Farias came to the United States at the age of 18 on a scholarship to study piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He has since made the United States his home. He transitioned from piano performance to orchestral conducting, earning further degrees from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In addition to the post in Kansas City, he has been Associate Conductor at the Jacksonville Symphony, Assistant Conductor of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, a Conducting Fellow at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Joliet Symphony Orchestra. He joined the Houston Symphony in 2023. 

“It’s not easy to be an immigrant, because you have to be so committed to your dream,” he said in a 2025 interview. Though living a continent away from his family has meant missing holidays, birthdays, and other milestones, his love of conducting keeps him going. “I’m born to do this,” he continued. “There’s absolutely nothing else that makes me happier and more myself than this.”

Farias’s path of self-discovery mirrors that of Encanto’s heroine. When Mirabel, the only Madrigal child without a magical power, realizes she is her family’s only hope in saving their home, she finally comes into her own. Instead of trying to be someone she is not, she discovers that her special power was within her all along — and it was one that required no magic at all.

Discovering who you are is just the first step. What Encanto teaches is that we must use our gifts to serve the community. As a conductor, Farias sees it as his duty to do just that, using music as a force for good both inside and outside the concert hall. “An orchestra is itself a community,” he says. “Everyone brings something personal, but we have to listen to one another and build something together. As a conductor, I have a responsibility to care for that process and help bring that spirit beyond the stage. Through music, human connection becomes something tangible, something we can hear and feel as we listen, respond, and create something together.”