CHICAGO — Four minutes into Bad Bunny’s halftime show during the Super Bowl on Sunday, the camera panned over two rows of grinning string players.

Leading them with graceful, sweeping beats and a sparkling hibiscus flower on his lapel? Giancarlo Guerrero, the chief conductor of Chicago’s own Grant Park Music Festival, the free orchestra series that plays at Pritzker Pavilion every summer.

Speaking with the Tribune on Monday after the show, Guerrero said he was “still in shock.” His team received a call from Bad Bunny’s manager on Jan. 31 inviting him to be one of more than 700 participants in the halftime show. During that call, Guerrero learned that the 31-year-old Bad Bunny (born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) not only asked for a Hispanic conductor, but for Guerrero specifically.

“Apparently, he was aware of my career,” Guerrero said.

Guerrero, 56, was born in Nicaragua but largely raised in Costa Rica. His family emigrated to escape the proxy Cold War conflicts that ravaged the nation from 1978 to 1990.

He eventually attended graduate school at Northwestern University and has become a fixture on local podiums, not only in his post at the Grant Park Music Festival but in frequent guest appearances at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (where he is slated to return this fall).

Guerrero’s Super Bowl appearance had to remain top-secret until Sunday — besides, of course, from him telling his wife and two daughters, who are “huge (Bad Bunny) fans.” His older daughter, who lives in Chicago, even flew to Puerto Rico last year to catch the megastar’s homecoming concerts there.

“When the girls get in the car, as you can imagine, they control the radio. So I was very aware of his music,” Guerrero said. “As soon as I got the invitation, we called both of our daughters on FaceTime. It took a while for them to realize that this was not a joke.”

Guerrero flew to San Francisco on Tuesday to begin rehearsing his spot in the show. When he had a chance to meet Bad Bunny one-on-one, Guerrero learned he was a classical music fan.

“That’s why he didn’t want to just put some sort of fake string orchestra (onstage). He wanted a real string orchestra, with a real conductor,” Guerrero says.

Guerrero is on camera for roughly 30 seconds while leading a corps of San Francisco-based musicians in the opening of “Monaco,” off Bad Bunny’s 2023 album “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” (“Nobody Knows What Will Happen Tomorrow”).

Bad Bunny used the moment to address the audience directly for the first time, introducing himself by his legal name.

“I’m here at Super Bowl 60, and it’s because I never, never stopped believing in myself,” he continued, in Spanish. “You should also believe in yourself — you’re worth more than you think.”

The Pan-American message of Bad Bunny’s set resonates with Guerrero’s own programming in Millennium Park. The music of American and Latin American composers has been at the core of the conductor’s repertoire, not just with the Grant Park Music Festival but at other posts in Sarasota, Florida, and in Nashville, Tennessee.

In the forthcoming Grant Park season, he will lead new works like Peruvian-American composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Conquest Requiem” and American composer Julia Wolfe’s “Liberty Bell,” as well as classics like Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from ‘West Side Story’” and Charles Ives’ “Variations on America.” Last season — Guerrero’s first as Grant Park artistic director and principal conductor — his roster included music by Brazil-born, Chicago-based Clarice Assad and the blockbuster Mexican composer Arturo Márquez.

Guerrero and Bad Bunny share another overlap: Both have won six Grammys. Guerrero’s last win was in 2021 for best orchestral performance for a Nashville Symphony recording that featured Ives’ “Variations on America.” Bad Bunny hit that total after the most recent Grammys, where he racked up three awards — including album of the year for 2025’s “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”).

And just like the young Puerto Rican sensation, Guerrero is in demand around the world. He caught a flight at 3 a.m. after the show to head to Florida, where he is also the music director of the Sarasota Orchestra. Future engagements will bring him not just all across the U.S. but to Poland, Germany and Portugal — all before summer kicks off again at Grant Park.

Guerrero sees parallels between Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance and what he and others do in classical music.

“I mean, this guy can go from one style to the other without blinking an eye. It reminded me a little bit of what we do, going from contemporary music, to Baroque, or to Romantic music,” he said. “That shows you the level of talent this guy has.”

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