Gustavo Dudamel
Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez (born 26 January 1981) is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist who is the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Opéra national de Paris. Life and career. Early life. Dudamel was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, the son of a trombonist and a voice teacher. He studied music from an early age, becoming involved with El Sistema, the famous Venezuelan musical education program, and took up the violin at age ten. He soon began to study composition. He attended the Jacinto Lara Conservatory, where José Luis Jiménez was  among his violin teachers. He then went on to work with José Francisco del Castillo at the Latin-American Violin Academy. Dudamel began to study conducting in 1995, first with Rodolfo Saglimbeni, then later with José Antonio Abreu. In 1999, he was appointed music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, the national youth orchestra of Venezuela, and toured several countries. He attended Charles Dutoit's master class in Buenos Aires in 2002, and worked as assistant for Simon Rattle in Berlin and Salzburg in 2003. Conducting career. Dudamel won a number of competitions, including the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition  in Germany in 2004. His reputation began to spread, attracting the attention of conductors such as Simon Rattle and Claudio Abbado, who accepted invitations to conduct the Simón Bolívar Orchestra in Veneite. In April 2006 Dudamel was appointed as principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony for the 2007/2008 season. Dudamel made his debut at La Scala, Milan, with "Don Giovanni" in November 2006. On 10 September 2007, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time at the Lucerne Festival. On 16 April 2007 he conducted the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Vatican's Paul VI Audience Hall in  a concert in commemoration of the 80th birthday of Pope Benedict XVI, with Hilary Hahn as solo violinist, with the Pope and many other Church dignitaries among the audience. In 2011, he featured in the documentary "Dudamel, Let the Children Play" directed by the Venezuelan filmmaker Alberto Arvelo. In 2013, Dudamel conducted the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra during the funeral of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Dudamel continues to retain his position with the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra. In April 2014 Dudamel returned to conduct with Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, as its honorary conductor, for concerts in the orchestra's home  city and on tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy. In 2015, Dudamel conducted both the opening and end titles, at the behest of famed film composer John Williams, for the official motion picture soundtrack and film of "". At the 2016 Super Bowl, Dudamel and Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) accompanied Coldplay and sang along with Chris Martin, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars. On 1 January 2017, Dudamel conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in their traditional New Year's Day Concert; at the age of only 35, he is the youngest guest conductor in history to lead this event. In December 2018, he  made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, conducting Verdi's "Otello". Dudamel served as the 2018–2019 artist-in-residence at Princeton University in celebration of Princeton University Concerts' 125th anniversary. This engagement included cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural panels & discussions, chamber concerts featuring musicians from his associated orchestras (the Met, LA, & Berlin), and in April 2019, Dudamel conducted the Princeton University Orchestra and the Princeton University Glee Club as the culmination of his year-long residency. In the Summer of 2019, Dudamel conducted the orchestra during the recording sessions for Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of  West Side Story, set for release on December 10, 2021. Dudamel first guest-conducted at the Opéra national de Paris in 2017. In April 2021, the Opéra National de Paris announced the appointment of Dudamel as its next music director, effective 1 August 2021, with an initial contract of six seasons. Music director, Los Angeles Philharmonic. Dudamel made his US conducting debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (LAP) at the Hollywood Bowl on 13 September 2005 in a program consisting of "La Noche de los Mayas" by Silvestre Revueltas and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. Dudamel was subsequently invited back  to conduct the orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall in January 2007 in performances of "Dances of Galánta" by Zoltán Kodály, the third piano concerto of Sergei Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman as soloist, and Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra (the latter of which was recorded live and subsequently released by Deutsche Grammophon). In April 2007, the LAP announced the appointment of Dudamel as its next music director, effective with the 2009–2010 season. His initial contract in Los Angeles was for five years, beginning in September 2009. In February 2011, the orchestra announced the extension of Dudamel's contract through  the end of the 2018–2019 season. In March 2015, the orchestra announced a further extension of his Los Angeles Philharmonic contract through the 2021–2022 season. His most recent LAP contract extension, announced in January 2020, is through the 2025-2026 season. Awards and media. Dudamel is featured in the documentary film "Tocar y Luchar", which covers El Sistema. Dudamel and the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar received the WQXR Gramophone Special Recognition Award in New York City in November 2007. Another US television news feature on Dudamel was on "60 Minutes" in February 2008, entitled "Gustavo the Great." On 23 July  2009, Dudamel was selected by the Eighth Glenn Gould Prize laureate José Antonio Abreu as winner of the prestigious The City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize. Dudamel is featured in the 2011 documentary "Let the Children Play", a film which focuses on his work advocating for music as a way to enrich children's lives. "Gramophone" named Dudamel its 2011 Gramophone Artist of the Year. Also in 2011, he was inducted into the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In February 2012, Dudamel won a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance, for his recording of Brahms Symphony No. 4 for  the label Deutsche Grammophon. In 2013, Dudamel was named Musical America's Musician of the Year and was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. The LAP's continued commitment to innovation and new music under the direction of Dudamel and Borda prompted "New Yorker" critic Alex Ross to name LAP "the most creative, and, therefore, the best orchestra in America." Dudamel received the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society from the Longy School in 2014 and the Americas Society Cultural Achievement Award in 2016. The character of Rodrigo in Amazon's "Mozart in  the Jungle" was based, in part, on Dudamel. Rodrigo is also curly-haired, Latin American, very young, and usually referred to only by his first name. In the first episode of the show's second season, in which Rodrigo appears as a guest conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dudamel appears as a guest actor, playing the part of a stage manager. In June 2018, Dudamel received Chile's Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. Also in June, the Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts (VAEA) awarded Dudamel the Paez Medal of Art 2018. Dudamel is featured as  the name of an achievement in the game A Rite from the Stars, released on 19 July 2018. The player gets it for solving a music puzzle in less than 14 seconds. In August 2018, Dudamel announced plans for the LA Phil's 2018/2019 centennial season, including an unprecedented 50 commissions of new music and a Frank Gehry-designed permanent home for Dudamel's YOLA youth orchestra. On 18 October 2018, it was announced that Dudamel would become the 25th recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 22  January 2019. In his speech accepting it, he said that it should belong to Venezuela, the country he is from, and that "tomorrow [23 Jan. 2019] is a crucial day [and] the voice of the masses must be heard and respected", referring to the planned national protest on that date and the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis. Personal life. Dudamel has been married twice. His first marriage, in 2006, was to Eloísa Maturén in Caracas. Maturén, also a Venezuelan native, is a classically trained ballet dancer and a journalist. Their marriage produced a son, Martín Dudamel Maturén, a U.S. citizen (born  1 April 2011). In March 2015, Dudamel and Maturén filed papers for divorce. In February 2017, Dudamel secretly married Spanish actress María Valverde, whom he had first met in 2016, in Las Vegas, Nevada. He became a Spanish citizen in 2018. Discography. 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018