Portuguese-American conductor Jacomo Bairos continues to redefine what a conductor can be and do in the 21st century, challenging the preconceptions of orchestral repertoire, blurring the lines of genre, and integrating the orchestra into the broader community in holistic and organic ways. The seventeenth Music Director for the Amarillo Symphony and Co-Founder and Artistic Director for Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble, Maestro Bairos performs regularly as a guest conductor with some of the world’s finest orchestras. This week’s concerts mark his Boston Pops debut. His other conducting debuts in 2018-2019 include performances with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Mr. Bairos is an accomplished and award-winning tubist, having given master classes and concerts with major festivals and orchestras around the world. He has performed, toured, and recorded with the New York Philharmonic as well as with the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cincinnati, and Seattle. He has held principal positions with orchestras in America and Spain, and from 2004-2007, Mr. Bairos was principal tuba for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. He is also a yoga teacher and a practitioner of Vipassana meditation. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, Jacomo Bairos makes his home in Miami, FL, and serves his community by working with and mentoring underserved children throughout the southern Florida and Panhandle-Texas region.

Guidebook author and travel TV host Rick Steves is America’s most respected authority on European travel. Rick took his first trip to Europe in 1969, visiting piano factories with his father, a piano importer. As an 18-year-old, Rick began traveling on his own, funding his trips by teaching piano lessons. In 1976, he started his business, Rick Steves’ Europe, which has grown from a one-man operation to a company with a staff of 100 full-time, well-traveled employees at its headquarters in Edmonds, WA, near Seattle. There he produces a bestselling guidebook series on European travel, America’s most popular travel series on public television, a weekly hour-long national public radio show, a weekly syndicated column, and free travel information available through his travel center and ricksteves.com. Rick Steves’ Europe also runs a successful European tour program organizing small-group tours that take more than 30,000 travelers to Europe annually. His mission: to empower Americans to take European trips that are fun, affordable, and culturally broadening. When not on the road, Rick is active in his church and with advocacy groups focused on economic and social justice, drug policy reform, and ending hunger. He lives and works in his hometown of Edmonds, where his office window overlooks his old junior high school.