It was by a stroke of chance that Giancarlo Guerrero found himself in charge of an orchestra almost 5,000 miles away from his home in Nashville.

“I happened to be conducting in Berlin a few years ago,” the conductor remembers, “and I got a call from my manager in London saying, ‘You know what? There’s an orchestra in Poland that the conductor became ill. They’re opening their season. They need somebody desperately. They were wondering if you could do it.'”

Guerrero had just enough time in his schedule to make the concert happen. After an invitation to return for another performance (a visit that he now realizes was, essentially, a job interview) Guerrero found himself with a permanent gig.

Even though he’d never heard of Wrocław, Poland, Guerrero was surprised by how much the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic — and the brand-new National Forum Music concert hall from which they take their name — felt like home.

“It reminded me a lot of Nashville when I came to become music director,” he says, “when the hall had just opened, and how it really revitalized the city, the orchestra and the institution.”

Guerrero is, of course, talking about the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, which opened in 2006, just a few years before he stepped in to lead the Nashville Symphony.

But sparkling new concert halls aside, Nashville and Wrocław also have their differences. For one, audiences in each city have unique tastes in orchestral music.

“Every city has their own traditions, their own vibes and their own energy. And it is really finding a way of tailor-making the programs that you choose,” Guerrero explains. “The repertoire, the soloists, and everything else that you put on that stage somehow is relevant for that city in that time, hopefully of their history.”

Wrocław has a storied history dating back over a thousand years. Today it’s one of the largest cities in Poland, but in the past, it has also been part of Germany, Prussia and the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary. In a country that has undergone so much change, the music an orchestra plays takes on an important significance in expressing national identity.

Guerrero says that because of this history, he tries to program repertoire that “speaks to the people there; that they feel that it belongs to them.”

The music of Polish composers like Karol Szymanowski, Krysztof Penderecki, and Witold Lutosławski are the Wrocław’s specialty. Guerrero asserts that there’s just something magic about hearing a Polish orchestra play the music of their countrymen.

“[These composers] wrote music that was somehow related to the times and the places that they lived in. And in the case of Poland, I have to tell you, it’s a country that is so immensely proud of their heritage that when we play that music, it’s like they own it.”

Guerrero, who spends about 12 weeks a year conducting the orchestra in Poland, is now on tour with the ensemble, bringing all of that Polish music to American audiences.

On Tuesday night, Guerrero will bring them home to Nashville. For the conductor, it feels like bringing two families together.

“This is one of the great joys because in the end, we all speak the language of music,” he says, adding that the end goal is the same: “to bring great music and great concerts and musical experiences to audiences.”

With all the joy Guerrero feels at the meeting of his two musical families, he hopes in the future that the Nashville Symphony can someday cross the ocean to perform in Poland. Until then, the maestro is ready to give the Wrocław musicians all of his Music City tourist recommendations.

“I just told them, you know, from the [Schermerhorn], just go! First of all, one block to the honky-tonks. You’ve got to experience that! This is the only place in the world where you can listen to Shostakovich and Lutosławski, then walk one block and hear the best bluegrass and best jazz in the world.”

And as far as his culinary recommendations?

“You cannot go wrong. My God, Nashville has become such a foodie town!”

So for at least a few days, at the behest of their conductor, the Wrocław Philharmonic will be trading pierogi for hot chicken and Penderecki for Patsy Cline.