Word: dudamel
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...Sistema (The System). It has served some half a million kids since the 1970s and is undoubtedly one of the most successful music-education projects of its kind in the world, emulated today as far away as Scotland. It has also produced its own international superstar: conductor Gustavo Dudamel, 28, who was recently named musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic but is returning to lead the Simon Bolivar on this month's tour of the U.S. and Europe. "Dudamel," says Abreu, "is the incarnation of Venezuela's emergence as a musical power in the world." (Read more about Gustavo...
...rain-battered August day in Edinburgh, and inside the city's Usher Hall the conductor Gustavo Dudamel is having difficulty with the strings. It is the final rehearsal of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, and Dudamel wants the violins to be more biting and caustic. Any successful performance of Shostakovich's 10th must reflect its historical context: Stalin's purges; some 20 million dead; a composer who lived in constant fear of the knock on the door. "Muchachos," Dudamel says, searching for the right expression. "Pop pop pop!" he says, mimicking the sound of a firing squad...
...unlikely image from a man as decidedly unmilitaristic as Dudamel. As a child growing up in the Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto, he was given a set of toy soldiers by his mother. Instead of waging war, he arranged the soldiers into an orchestra and began conducting them. The ascent of his career since then has been breathtakingly swift: the winner of a major conducting competition at 23, he was offered Sweden's Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra at 25; then, in April, on the strength of only two guest appearances, the storied Los Angeles Philharmonic announced that the 26-year-old would...
Simon Rattle, one of Dudamel's mentors, has called him "the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across." Daniel Barenboim and Claudio Abbado lavish similar praise on him - a virtual anointing by the three giants of European conducting. Deutsche Grammophon has given Dudamel a record deal, and, between now and mid-October he is on a high-profile European tour that will take him to historic concert halls in Germany, Sweden, Italy and France. So what makes Dudamel so special? The role of a conductor is at once comprehensible and untranslatable. The task is dauntingly clear: to mold...
...orchestra is back at the Usher Hall. Dudamel takes the podium for the Shostakovich. He lifts the baton. The strings ready themselves. Dudamel meets the gaze of his orchestra, their upturned eyes glistening under the bright lights. The bond between them is unmistakable; their performance is breathtaking...
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