Mambos de gustavo dudamel and biography
The
Hudson
Review
In August of 2007, a YouTube video spread rapidly through the world of serious music aficionados. The three-and-a-half-minute clip was drawn from the telecast of a BBC Proms concert in London and features a diminutive, frizzy-haired young man in a windbreaker designed in the colors and patterns of the Venezuelan flag, conducting an orchestra of similarly-clad youth. The piece is the “Mambo” section from Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, the conductor is Gustavo Dudamel, and the ensemble is the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. As the clip begins, an adoring audience greets Dudamel as he steps to the podium and directs the musicians to lift their instruments over their heads. Dudamel then lifts his arms high and dives down, as the orchestra explodes with a two-note tutti fanfare, followed by feverish percussion and jerky, syncopated brass licks. The music is raucous and showy, but tight and virtuosic as well. It’s instantly electric, but these kids are just getting started.
As the piece proceeds, the camera starts to catch a few players giving their instruments a little spin and bounce as they lift them to play. When they reach the spot where Bernstein asks the orchestra members to shout “mambo!,” the musicians don’t just speak, they leap out of their seats, raise their hands in the air, and twirl their instruments around. Then things really start getting crazy. At the syncopated dig two minutes into the piece, the winds and then the strings begin to swing back and forth in their seats in time to the music, bopping and grooving. Dudamel grins and the audience explodes with excitement. A rambunctious French horn player gets a little carried away and his colleagues laugh indulgently. Thirty seconds later, the entire orchestra stands and turns around in place, swinging their shoulders and hips, provoking more boisterous love from the audience. Tw
Program Features Kurtag's Stele, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 and Strauss' Alpine Symphony
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4 AT 8 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5 AT 11 AM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6 AT 8 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7 AT 2 PM
Thursday's concert generously sponsored by Bessemer Trust; Saturday's concert is generously sponsored by Acura, Official Automotive Sponsor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic All Acura Vehicles Park Free for the Evening
Music Director Designate Gustavo Dudamel continues his Los Angeles Philharmonic 2008/09 residency with four concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, December 4 - 7, 2008. Each program features renowned pianist Rudolf Buchbinder performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. Dudamel opens each concert program with Kurt'ag's Stele, and closes each program with Strauss' Alpine Symphony.
Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag has forged an international reputation for deeply expressive music, often the musical equivalent of diary entries and personal messages. Stele, a 15-minute funeral ode, was written for the Berlin Philharmonic in 1994 and performed by the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. TheNew York Times review states, "Mr. Kurt'ag has not composed much orchestra music, but here the fineness of the textures and the originality of the colors advertise the poise of a master."
Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder is firmly established as one of the most important pianists on the international scene. He has over 100 recordings to his credit, covering an enormous range of repertoire, including the complete Mozart piano concertos. He makes his debut appearance at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and his first appearance with Gustavo Dudamel, for these performances of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23.
Strauss' massive Alpine Symphony depicts a full day of hiking in the Alps, from ascent to descent, dawn to dusk (including a glorious thunderstorm). The Alpine Symphony is performed in one continuous movement, and is one of Strauss' largest non-operatic composition THE GUSTAVO DUDAMEL STORY Son of a trombonist and a singing teacher, Gustavo was playing with symphonies when others were still busy with finger-painting. In the Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto, where crime and drugs threatened many of his young peers, Gustavo credits the extraordinary music education that he enjoyed with his remarkable success. As a young child, Gustavo Dudamel yearned for the day when his arms would be long enough to enable him to play the trombone, like his father. But at his local "nucleo", music teachers found a violin to fit his young limbs, and Gustavo found his place in the world of the symphony orchestra. Concerts and orchestras fascinated him; by the time he was 10 years old, Gustavo was reading scores the way other children read novels. Almost four decades down the line, some half a million children, most of them from communities living below the poverty line, have grown up in the orchestras of El Sistema. "I was in a rehearsal in Barquisimeto one day, and the conductor was sick, and the podium was empty, so I thought, OK, an Discoveries
About the Album
About this recording
To understand how Gustavo Dudamel, an ordinary Venezuelan child from a rough neighbourhood, has risen from daydreamer to stardom, it is necessary to understand “El Sistema”.
Dudamel grew up with music. His father played the trombone, and he was soon offered violin lessons at the local núcleo. Venezuela’s National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras offers music lessons to hundreds of thousands of youngsters, many of them from severely disadvantaged backgrounds, through their local núcleos. In return, the children agree to play in an ensemble. As soon as they have mastered the basics of their instrument, they in turn teach and guide younger musicians.
It’s all the work of one visionary man. José Antonio Abreu, pianist and economist, founded El Sistema in 1975, when he assembled a small group of young musicians in a parking garage. The group grew from day to day. Today, Venezuela boasts several hundred symphony orchestras. El Sistema is internationally recognised as the benchmark in music education as a force for social change, and has inspired similar organisations in the USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Sweden and throughout South America.
It was Abreu who spotted Dudamel’s exceptional talent when he saw the then 15-year-old conducting the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. Just five years later, Abreu appointed the young man music director of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, El Sistema’s flagship ensemble. At 25, Dudamel caused an international sensation when he won the inaugural Bamberger Symphoniker Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition.
Two years later, Dudamel became chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. By the time he was appointed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 2009, he was already a firm favourite with the venerable Philharmonics of Berlin and Vienna. His repertoire spans the high-octane pulse of South American music to the broad e About Gustavo
Growing Up through Music
Music shaped the joys and dreams of Gustavo Dudamel’s childhood.
"I remember that I had a favorite game. I had little toy soldiers, but not with guns. I would put them into orchestral positions, and then I would put on some music, and I would always be the conductor. It was fun!"Visionary economist, organist and politician José Antonio Abreu started Venezuela’s "El Sistema" in 1975, with five children in a parking garage.
Like all youngsters who join "El Sistema", Gustavo Dudamel learned social responsibility alongside musicianship. It is fundamental to the principals of "El Sistema" that older students act as mentors for their younger peers, and that successful professional musicians will also take on work as teachers and leaders. Children learn conducting in the same way that they learn instrumental skills–deep end first.