Gabriela Garza Canales is a musician, conductor, percussionist and arts administrator currently living in Seattle, Washington.
On her fourth year on staff at the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra (SYSO), Ms. Garza is the Director of the Seattle Conservatory of Music. Additionally, Ms. Garza has led and conducted multiple SYSO orchestras and summer programs, including the Junior Symphony Orchestra, the Debut Symphony Orchestra, SYSO Summer Music and Marrowstone Music Festival.

In addition to her roles at SYSO, Ms. Garza has been an active conductor and musician throughout Washington state and abroad, having guest or assistant conducting appearances with the Seattle Collaborative Orchestra, the Sammamish Symphony Orchestra, the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra, Lake Washington Symphony Orchestra, Albuquerque Philharmonia, UANL’s Philharmonic Orchestra in Monterrey, Mexico and more.

Prior to her current roles, Ms. Garza was Music Director of the Poulsbo Community Orchestra (2020-2022), where she made impactful contributions during the COVID pandemic. During her tenure, she pushed the boundaries of the traditional approach to the performance of orchestral music through interactive, immersive, and multi-media musical experiences that brought the community together during a time of isolation. She crafted ten events alongside musicians and visual artists who sought to share their artistry with members of the Poulsbo community. Her concert series with PCO serve as examples of Ms. Garza’s programming, her leadership style, her community engagement efforts, and her ability to adaptively integrate technology and partnership in order to bring her orchestra and the community together in a time of hardship.

During the summer and fall of 2020, Ms. Garza was invited to participate as a guest speaker in different virtual conducting conferences and music workshops in Mexico, including the Festival Internacional de Música Mexicana at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL), the Coloquio de Educación Musical a Nivel Superior at the Universidad de Aguascalientes, the Seminario Hispano de Dirección Orquestal, organized and led by maestro Andrés Santinelli in Puebla, México, and more. For these appearances, Ms. Garza, alongside her mentor Dr. Pérez-Gómez often presented on topics related to Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas and conducting technique.

In January 2019, Gabriela founded her own interdisciplinary project, titled [R]evolve for which she was granted an award by the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. Gabriela curated two [R]evolve projects in which international, local musicians and artists collaborated in order to bring awareness to certain contemporary and relevant issues.
Additionally, over the spring of 2019, Ms. Garza was invited to Guanajuato, Mexico as a guest conductor for the Proyecto Silvestre Revueltas, a project curated by the Associazione Italiana Silvestre Revueltas. A concert was presented in May of the same year at Teatro Juárez.

Since 2018, Ms. Garza has had a long-standing collaboration with the Whidbey Island Orchestra, leading up to two concert cycles per season. This 23-24 season, she will be working with the orchestra on a six-week cycle for a November concert and a March concert as well, both cycles with performances at the Whidbey Center for the Arts.

Alongside her professional pursuits, Ms. Garza is a 5th year doctoral candidate in orchestral conducting at the University of Washington (UW), in where she has studied under the mentorship of David Alexander Rahbee and Ludovic Morlot. From September 2017 up to June 2020 she served as co-conductor of the UW Campus Philharmonia Orchestras and assistant conductor of the UW Symphony Orchestra.

Prior to her Doctoral studies, Ms. Garza earned a Master’s Degree in orchestral conducting from the University of New Mexico (UNM) under the mentorship of Dr. Jorge Pérez-Gómez. She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in music performance with an emphasis in percussion from UNM under the direct instruction of Professor Scott Ney.

Ms. Garza has participated in multiple workshops in the United States and abroad such as the Young Artist Summer Program at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Hartt School Music’s Summer Term, the Cascade Conducting Workshop, the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival and the Spazio Musica Opera Conducting Workshop in Orvieto, Italy. Gabriela has attended masterclasses with conductors Ludovic Morlot, Sarah Ioannides, Jorge Pérez-Gómez, Vittorio Parisi, Michael Jimbo, Erin Freeman, Ajtony Csaba, Edward Cumming, and more.

Ms. Garza began her percussion studies at UANL in 2009 under the instruction of professor Noel Savón Favier and she has toured extensively as a percussionist in a wide variety of ensembles throughout North America.