Conductor on His Big Move

The whole thing looked more like a rock show than a symphony concert. Then again, Dudamel is the closest thing to a rock star the classical music world has.

After nearly two decades in Los Angeles, Dudamel hobnobs with the likes of Chris Martin and John Williams, is close friends with Frank Gehry (who designed the stunning Walt Disney Concert Hall, the L.A. Phil’s home that opened a little over 20 years ago) and counts Billie Eilish, Gwen Stefani, Ricky Martin and Carlos Vives among the dozens of pop world luminaries who’ve guested under his (non-vibranium) baton. He has won five Grammy Awards (including, this year, best orchestral performance for the L.A. Phil’s recording of composer Thomas Adès’ Dante) and placed nine albums at No. 1 on Billboard’s Traditional Classical Albums chart. His life is the subject of the documentary Viva Maestro! And, though never officially confirmed, he was clearly the inspiration behind the character of the free-thinking, mercurial Latin maestro played by Gael García Bernal in the Amazon Prime series Mozart in the Jungle, in which he had a small role as a stage manager.

In the span of just two weeks from the end of August to mid-September, Dudamel conducted Strauss with the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg, Austria, and then flew to Los Angeles where, including the two Marvel shows, he led the L.A. Phil in nine concerts, conducting Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and Beethoven’s Ninth; dances by living Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra; Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals and scenes from Bizet’s Carmen; plus two evenings of contemporary Latin music with Mexican pop/folk singer Natalia Lafourcade. It’s a staggering musical offering. All told, more than 100,000 people attended Dudamel’s nine summer concerts at the Hollywood Bowl with the L.A. Phil, which he will again conduct on Oct. 8 at the opening night of Carnegie Hall’s 2024-25 season in New York.

“He is unique in the classical music world because not only does he lead the orchestra and elevate the work of the L.A. Phil in terms of excellence, but he also connects the orchestra with different kinds of music, collaborating with artists [in other genres] with which we wouldn’t typically perform,” L.A. Phil president/CEO Kim Noltemy says. “The result is he brings orchestra music to so many different people. That is one unbelievably unique piece that makes Gustavo special.”

For Dudamel, it’s part of a deep-rooted belief that music as an art, with purpose, supersedes specific forms and genres. “As an orchestral musician, you value the work of these pop artists, and likewise, pop acts have the opportunity to see that the academicism of the other side isn’t overwhelming, but rather, it’s the same thing in a different style,” he says. “Yes, there’s a fascinating technical complexity [to classical music]. But in the end, what matters is what you feel and what people perceive. We have to erase people’s fears regarding classical music. It may be intellectual in execution, but music’s power is spiritual.”

Not since Leonard Bernstein has a conductor done as much as Dudamel to make classical music accessible — or so thoroughly captured the public imagination. The two maestros share a not just persuasive but borderline evangelical approach to relentlessly promoting music as a “fundamental human right,” not just by broadening what qualifies as “classical” repertoire but also broadening the concept of the orchestra itself. Bernstein’s televised Young People’s Concerts were central to his efforts to expand classical music’s audience; Dudamel has worked to create youth orchestras worldwide. And then, of course, there’s the hair: Bernstein’s silky pompadour flung about wildly as he conducted, and while Dudamel’s signature curly brown mop is perhaps a little less springy than when he made his U.S. conducting debut with the L.A. Phil in 2005 and is now peppered with gray, it still pops and sways with the music.

It’s a visible reminder of the personal stamp he continues to leave in a world of relatively staid personalities, and undoubtedly a factor in his broad recognizability. Dudamel is one of the few faces in classical music known far beyond the space, no doubt one of many reasons the L.A. Phil will miss him when his last season as music and artistic director ends and he officially takes over the New York Philharmonic in its 2026-27 season as music and artistic director.

When he does, Dudamel will become the first Latino to helm the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, joining a pantheon of giants that includes Arturo Toscanini, Gustav Mahler and Bernstein himself. Expectations for his arrival are so heightened, says N.Y. Phil executive advisor and interim CEO Deborah Borda, that even though Dudamel will not formally join for another season, “we saw a record surge in subscription sales, as patrons are concerned they won’t be able to secure tickets once he starts.”

For Dudamel, being the first Latino to lead the N.Y. Phil long term is a matter of “immense pride. But I feel it doesn’t have to do with a race or a culture,” he says. Historically, he notes, the great symphony orchestras in the United States and beyond have been led mostly by European men who not only represented the music they performed, but also the European migration to this country and Latin America.

Dudamel’s story is completely different. The real triumph “is about where I come from,” he says. “I don’t come from a traditional music conservatory. I come from El Sistema de Orquestas, a program where you grow up playing music with your friends.”

It’s the morning after he has conducted Carnival of the Animals and Carmen, and Dudamel has joined me for coffee in an empty Hollywood Bowl meeting room. He has traded the formal white dinner jacket of the Marvel show for offstage casual — track pants, short-sleeved T-shirt and sneakers — and his trademark mix of impish humor (accentuated by his still-­boyish dimples) and deep thoughtfulness. Born and raised in Venezuela, Dudamel learned English as an adult, and though it’s grammatically perfect — albeit with a clipped, precise accent — he prefers his native Spanish, which he speaks very quickly (as most Venezuelans do) and with the erudite lingo of an intellectual, often citing the likes of Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno or Mexican writer Octavio Paz.

Today, we’re talking not just about his new appointment and the legacy he’ll leave behind in L.A. as he begins to build another in New York, but also the legacy he grew up with — one that still defines him.

At 43, Dudamel is almost as old as El Sistema Nacional de Orquestas y Coros Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela (The National System of Venezuelan Youth and Children’s Choruses and Orchestras). Known simply as El Sistema, it was founded in 1975 by musician-economist José Antonio Abreu, who held several government appointments and built El Sistema as part of the government structure, guaranteeing its existence and funding regardless of who was in power.

El Sistema was created more than 20 years before the Hugo Chávez regime, built on the premise that music education should be free and accessible to all children, everywhere in the country. For Abreu, who died in 2018, the power of music was transformative, spiritual and lasting, particularly in a developing country rife with poverty. What started with a first rehearsal attended by 11 children eventually grew to 443 schools (each called a “nucleus” in Sistema terminology) and 1,700 satellite centers that teach over 1 million children in Venezuela’s 24 states, according to El Sistema’s official webpage.

Abreu’s philosophy — famously, he said that “a child who plays an instrument with a teacher is no longer poor; he is a child on the rise” — is one Dudamel not only espouses but assumes as his identity. He’s still the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and will tour Europe with it next year for El Sistema’s 50th anniversary. (The tour stops are connected to cities with which Dudamel has a personal history.) He has no plans to change his commitment to it. “I would give my life for the orchestra,” he states bluntly. “It gave me everything I’m living now, and that’s why I share it as much as I can.”

But in the last few years, throughout Venezuela’s many political government crises and now, after the contested July reelection of President Nicolás Maduro — who has been in power since 2013 and whose latest reelection has been widely disclaimed both domestically and internationally as rigged — Dudamel has sometimes been criticized by other Venezuelans abroad for not speaking out more against the government.

Some critics have suggested that Maduro has used Venezuela’s youth orchestra to his political advantage. Renowned Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero has long called it a propaganda tool; when Dudamel conducted the ensemble at Carnegie Hall days after Maduro’s reelection, Human Rights Foundation parked a truck outside the venue displaying the message “Maduro Stole The Election” and asking Dudamel, “How long will you continue to serve as Maduro’s puppet and henchman?” The organization explained on social media that it wanted “to remind the world of Maduro’s fraud and to call out Dudamel for engaging in shameless propaganda and providing cover for the Venezuelan dictator.”

But, Dudamel points out, he has not been silent. He has written New York Times and Los Angeles Times op-eds calling for an end to repression in Venezuela and speaking against the government’s plans to rewrite the nation’s constitution. In 2017, after Venezuelan government forces killed a young violinist during a protest, Dudamel published an open letter, writing, “Nothing justifies bloodshed. We must stop ignoring the just cry of the people suffocated by an intolerable crisis. I urgently call on the President of the Republic and the national government to rectify and listen to the voice of the Venezuelan people.”

“I am one voice,” he says today. “People think if I speak out everything is going to change, but that’s not the case. There needs to be radical change, and that will take a lot of time.

“We live in a world of immediacy, where there’s always pressure to say something,” he adds when I ask why he hasn’t spoken out more in the wake of July’s contested election. “When do people actually reflect before speaking? You have to consider the entire situation. El Sistema de Orquestas represents all Venezuela, not just a part of it… El Sistema is focused on the neediest communities. That’s the truth. Isn’t that a way to change the country, far more than shouting? So you have to be prudent because you’re part of that. I’m not an individual speaking as an individual because that’s not how I grew up. I grew up in an orchestra.”

This was Dudamel’s mindset during his own first El Sistema experience. He started music lessons at a school in his native Barquisimeto, a quaint city of under 1 million people in northwestern Venezuela. This was the mid-’80s, still years before Chávez took power, but a decade into the existence of El Sistema, which by then was thriving.

“I was only 5 years old, but I remember it perfectly,” Dudamel recalls. “It was the home of Doña Doralisa de Medina. It was a tiny colonial house where Maestro Abreu studied as a child. Doralisa was no longer alive, but El Sistema was there. The house had a red gate with musical notes. I walked in down a passageway and then to a patio, and I heard Chopin on the piano, a trumpet, violins. I fell in love with that cacophony.”

El Sistema didn’t pluck Dudamel out of abject poverty. His father is a working salsa trombonist; his mother, a voice teacher. His uncle, a doctor, was also a gifted cuatro player who taught Dudamel how to play popular Venezuelan music: waltzes, tangos, boleros — what Dudamel calls his very essence.

Perhaps because music flowed through his family, Dudamel’s own studies were encouraged but never imposed. He started conducting by accident, when his youth orchestra’s conductor arrived late for rehearsal and Dudamel took the podium, almost as if it was a game.

While no one ever told him he would make it big, his talent would have been impossible to miss. Abreu took an early interest in him, becoming a mentor and moral compass. He’s still very much alive in Dudamel’s head — he constantly begins sentences with “El Maestro Abreu…” — as are his teachings: to think long term, to learn from mistakes, to see music as a social instrument. It was Abreu, after all, who urged Dudamel, then in his early 20s, to enter Germany’s prestigious Mahler Competition, for conducting works by the vaunted composer, in 2004. When he won, it changed his life, catapulting him from local star to global wunderkind.

Among the jurors was Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Finnish composer and current San Francisco Symphony music director who was, at the time, music director of the L.A. Phil. “I was deeply impressed by the talent of this guy, but also, I felt he was such a good guy,” Salonen recalls. “I told him I wanted to invite him to L.A.” As he got to know Dudamel, he continues, “I became so convinced about him being my favorite person to take over in L.A. and become my successor, taking [the orchestra] in a different direction but keeping his curiosity and openness.” A mere three years later, Salonen’s wishes came true: the L.A. Phil — where Deborah Borda was then executive director — appointed Dudamel music director, effective with the 2009-10 season.

Dudamel’s personable demeanor and charismatic conducting style immediately enchanted L.A. audiences and the ensemble’s players alike — he is, after all, affectionately known as “The Dude” to both cohorts. But from the jump, his mission went far beyond the podium. “I was very young, and evidently there was a human and artistic connection with the orchestra and the administration,” he says. “But my first order of business was creating El Sistema here. That’s how YOLA began.”

YOLA is Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, the L.A. Phil’s music education program, that Dudamel created in 2007. It currently serves close to 1,700 young musicians across five sites in the city, providing them free instruments, intensive music instruction (up to 18 hours per week), academic support and leadership training. The program has inspired hundreds of versions around the world; in the United States alone, El Sistema USA serves 140 member programs, 6,000 teaching artists and 25,000 students. Dudamel also launched a mentorship program for young conductors in 2009 and now brings four each season to assist the L.A. Phil’s guest conductors.

But education and training are just part of the equation to “create identity and have people see themselves reflected in the [L.A.] Philharmonic,” Dudamel says. “Right or wrong, cultural artistic institutions are seen as elitist for many, especially those who don’t have resources. The adventure was to make of the [L.A.] Philharmonic an institution people could identify with.”

Dudamel began doing this gradually by being more experimental in his programming, adding more pop and jazz guest artists, bringing Hollywood into the mix (he has famously played multiple concerts of John Williams’ music, with Williams in attendance) and opening up the repertoire to new works and unexpected juxtapositions. A ticket buyer who might not want to hear a world-premiere commission might be lured in by Beethoven; one allergic to the idea of Beethoven might reconsider after seeing an orchestra perform with Ricky Martin.

“For me, it wasn’t only about building a good orchestra,” Dudamel says. “That already existed. But now we have one of the top orchestras in the world, respected as much for its technical level as for its proud acceptance of the repertoire and the way they perform it. This wasn’t ‘Oh, Gustavo, come in and do whatever you want.’ It was figuring out how to build it.” Dudamel had the Hollywood Bowl, Disney Hall and the orchestra. “All the elements were there,” he continues. “We just had to get the best out of them. And there’s still a lot to do.”

Dudamel conducted the L.A. Phil at the 2011 Latin Grammys and the 2019 Academy Awards. He led the orchestra alongside Billie Eilish and FINNEAS as part of the concert film experience Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles, released on Disney+. And he performed at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with members of YOLA, alongside Coldplay, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars.

“His authentic, warm connection with audiences really changes how people feel when watching a concert. Audiences are so excited to see him, and there’s a buzz around him,” Noltemy says, noting that pandemic era aside, attendance and audience diversity at the L.A. Phil have increased while the average age of concertgoers has decreased. “He’s certainly not the only conductor who has increased attendance and brought diversity, but he did so in L.A., a city that is so spread out. His concerts at Disney Hall tend to be sold out.”

Those results have occurred even as Dudamel has made a huge effort to foster contemporary composition (typically not an old-school orchestra subscriber’s favorite programming), commissioning music from composers around the world. During his tenure at the L.A. Phil, the orchestra has premiered “at least 300 new works” written specifically for the ensemble, he says, including many from Latin America.

“Latin American repertoire has to stop being [perceived as] exotic,” he says. “It’s not about ‘Wow, we’re playing Latin American music!’ No. It’s the fair thing to do. And the only way to include it in the repertoire is playing it but at the level it deserves, making it part of the regular repertoire of any orchestra.” Case in point: Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, a Dudamel mentee who was just named Carnegie Hall’s composer-in-residence for the coming season. In July, Platoon released her first full album of orchestral works, Revolución Diamantina (performed by the L.A. Phil and conducted by Dudamel), which is being submitted for Grammy consideration.

Just how much of his approach with the L.A. Phil Dudamel will be able to replicate in New York remains to be seen; as he says, he has yet to formally arrive and experience the orchestra. But in recent months, he has been working with both orchestras to forge a connection between the two.

In April, when Dudamel conducted the N.Y. Phil’s Spring Gala at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, he featured rapper Common, former New York Yankee and classically trained guitarist Bernie Williams and student musicians from several New York music schools, performing a program that also included classical works by Villa-Lobos and Strauss, as well as a premiere commissioned by the N.Y. Phil and Bravo! Vail Music Festival.

It was the kind of bold, cross-genre programming that Dudamel delights in doing in L.A. and clearly wants to emphasize in New York. “It was something completely new and wonderful. For me, that’s the kind of thing that makes the music transcend beyond the sometimes strict academic and intellectual isolation that classical music represents,” he says. “We can develop a lot in terms of repertoire and go beyond Lincoln Center and connect more with the entire community.”

The N.Y. Phil, for example, is known for its massive annual free outdoor concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, which is always attended by no less than 50,000, and it also performs in all five boroughs during its annual Concerts in the Parks. But the L.A. Phil has the Hollywood Bowl, an outdoor venue that seats 18,000 and is the orchestra’s home for the entire summer. It’s a big difference that Dudamel would like to somehow bridge.

He also joins the N.Y. Phil after the 2022 reopening of Geffen Hall following a $550 million renovation that drastically improved its acoustics. He says the new venue did not factor into his decision to go to New York, “but it was very important, especially for the orchestra. It’s been a plus to elevate the morale. Now the orchestra is in the process of building its sound with the ‘instrument’ [that is the new hall].” Optimism is also high following the Sept. 20 finalization of a new labor contract that ensured 30% raises for the orchestra’s musicians over the next three years, bringing their base salary to $205,000.

Dudamel is also taking the reins of an institution that lately has had its share of highly publicized troubles. After just one year on the job, N.Y. Phil CEO Gary Ginstling stepped down in July amid rising tensions with the orchestra’s board, according to a New York Times report. And the orchestra’s public image has been tarnished after reports earlier this year resurfaced a 2010 sexual misconduct charge made against two of its musicians. Although charges were never filed against the two men, the controversy led to the musicians being put on leave; they then sued the N.Y. Phil for doing so.

As Dudamel is not yet officially the N.Y. Phil’s music director (for the 2025-26 season, he is music director designate), he won’t comment on administrative matters other than to acknowledge that “those are problems that need to be resolved.” And although the administration of the orchestra ultimately is not his purview, “Obviously the morale of the orchestra is my responsibility, and you have to keep that morale high, taking the best decisions and advocating for justice for everyone,” he says. “That’s essential. We’re not isolated from what happens around us.”

Whatever may have occurred before his tenure begins, Dudamel is without a doubt joining an orchestra that respects him as a conductor, whose musicians have a history and rapport with him. “There was an undeniable spontaneous connection between our musicians and Gustavo, so much so that he was literally their only choice to be our next music director,” Borda says. “Selling tickets is important, but we believe this is best accomplished when you have the right artistic leader.”

Dudamel is acutely aware of the expectations now surrounding him. “It’s a challenge, but life without challenge… it’s nothing!” he says with some relish. “But I’m not a savior here. I have nothing to save. What we have to do is build, and that’s not just up to me. We have a great team.” And after all, he’s Dudamel — and by now, he understands it comes with the territory.

“People want you to scream what they scream, but no. To me, change isn’t about screaming but about building things that last, as I learned from Maestro Abreu,” he says. “I sincerely believe artists should be symbols of unity … They must guarantee that cathartic, unifying space we all need — not just here or in Venezuela, but everywhere.”

This fall, for example, Dudamel will lead the L.A. Phil in Mendelssohn’s music from A Midsummer’s Night Dream with his wife, Spanish actress María Valverde, providing narration — music by a German composer, written for the work of a British playwright who derived it from a Nordic story, now narrated in Spanish, conducted by a Venezuelan and performed by an American orchestra. Plus, the evening will feature the premiere of Ortiz’s new cello concerto.

“It’s the kind of thing you don’t even remark upon because it feels natural. But it’s a true reflection of diversity,” Dudamel says. “When you see all these elements come together, you realize, ‘Wow, this is powerful.’ ”

He speaks about this blend of so many seemingly disparate elements as if it’s destiny, or magic. But a moment like that — much like a career such as Dudamel’s — doesn’t occur by happenstance or without purpose.

“One thing about Gustavo I think needs to be said is that for someone who had a lot of success from very early on, he’s remarkable in that he never lost his center,” Salonen says. “He has never lost his ideals. He believes in music as a social cause, and he believes in music and the arts as a very central thing in keeping the fabric of society strong. And despite all the success and fame, he’s still the same guy I met all those years ago.”

This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.