In eight short years, 31-year-old Gustavo Dudamel has
become more in demand than any conductor in the world. He is a household name
in Los Angeles, where he is music director of the Philharmonic. He is mobbed in
Berlin, Vienna, Milan, London, and Caracas, Venezuela, where he is one of his
country's best-known and well-loved celebrities. Often compared to Leonard
Bernstein, Dudamel shares the American conductor's charisma, tireless advocacy
for music education, and expressive music-making. Dudamel studied violin as a
child, and in his early teens he was invited to study conducting with José
Antonio Abreu, architect of Venezuela's famed El Sistema music-education
program. At age 18 he became music director of the Sistema's elite Simón
Bolívar Youth Orchestra. In 2004, at age 23, he won the Bamberg Symphony's
Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, and in 2007 he began a five-year
appointment with Sweden's Gothenburg Symphony, which recently ended with his
being named honorary conductor. His Los Angeles appointment, which began in
September 2009, has been distinguished by the orchestra's founding of the
Sistema-like Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (YOLA) and a continuation of the
orchestra's and his own commitment to new music, notably that of John Adams,
who is the LAPhil's creative consultant.
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