Dudamel, Gustavo

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      They Said Her Music Was Too Exotic. Now She’s a Classical Star.

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      In a bustling public square in Mexico City on a summer day, as hummingbirds feasted on honeysuckle and candle sellers hawked remedies for broken hearts and anxious minds, the composer Gabriela Ortiz stood in the shadow of the San Juan Bautista church and closed her eyes.Around her in Plaza Hidalgo in the Coyoacán neighborhood, there was cacophony. In one corner, a man in a beret cranked out a fun-house tune on a barrel organ. In another, two young men performed a song in son huasteco style, their falsetto voices rising above the lunchtime chatter. Near a park bench, a woman with long flaxen hair and a karaoke machine sang “Yesterday Once More” by the Carpenters: Every sha-la-la-la.Ortiz, who grew up in Mexico City playing Haydn on the piano and Latin American folk music on the charango, a mandolinlike instrument, opened her eyes and smiled. Then, after offering a few pesos to the organist, she headed down a cobblestone street in search of a cappuccino.“There is no quiet place in Mexico City,” she said. “Everyone has something to say. And music is how we say it.”Ortiz, 59, who will be Carnegie Hall’s composer in residence this season, has spent her life channeling the sounds and sensibilities of Latin America into classical music. For most of the past 40 years, this has been a lonely pursuit. Teachers said her works were too exotic. Critics bristled at her sprawling sonorities. Top orchestras passed her over in doling out commissions.But now, after a series of big breaks, Ortiz is thriving.Ortiz, center, with the star conductor Gustavo Dudamel at Alice Tully Hall in New York after the world premiere of her piece “Clara” in 2022. Dudamel has premiered seven Ortiz works.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Facing Turmoil at Home, Young Artists Find a Musical Haven in New York

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      As the tour boat in New York Harbor approached the Statue of Liberty, Miranda Marín, a 12-year-old violinist from Venezuela, turned to a group of friends gathered near the bow and jumped up and down.“We’re here!” she shouted, taking pictures of the statue’s crown. “Can you believe it?”Marín, along with more than 160 members of the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela, had come to New York for a weeklong festival that ended on Wednesday at Carnegie Hall. The festival, known as World Orchestra Week, featured more than 700 student musicians from 38 countries, including China, Nigeria, Germany, Afghanistan, Israel, Ukraine and the United States.When they were not practicing Beethoven, Ginastera or folk music, the young artists toured New York by boat, bus and subway, venturing out for pizza and ice cream. The Venezuelans held a dance party and played a card game called caída on a Circle Line cruise. The Afghan students toured the Juilliard School and the United Nations and visited the top of Rockefeller Center.The National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesGraham Dickie/The New York TimesGustavo Dudamel, the renowned conductor from Venezuela, led the National Children’s Symphony. “This is the Venezuela that we want,” he said from the podium.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kim Noltemy, Orchestra Veteran, Is Tapped to Lead L.A. Philharmonic

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      Noltemy, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s chief executive, will take the helm of the Philharmonic as it searches for its next music director.The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s history of inventive programming and strong finances have made it the envy of orchestras around the United States.But recently, the ensemble has been going through a period of abrupt change. Chad Smith, the ensemble’s former president and chief executive, left last year to run the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Gustavo Dudamel, its celebrated music and artistic director, will depart for the New York Philharmonic in 2026.On Wednesday, though, the orchestra said it had found a leader who can help put it back on track. Kim Noltemy, a veteran administrator, will become the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s next president and chief executive, starting in July.Noltemy, 55, who has led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since 2018, said that she hoped to build on the Philharmonic’s legacy of innovation.“The potential for the Los Angeles Philharmonic to grow, thrive and make a huge impact in changing how people think about music and how music affects their lives is enormous,” she said in an interview.Thomas L. Beckmen, the chairman of the Philharmonic’s board of directors, said that Noltemy rose to the top of the list of candidates because of her experience. Before Dallas, she held leadership posts at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.“Of all the people we interviewed, she was the most prepared,” Beckmen said in an interview. “Sometimes, I thought she knew more about us than I knew about us.”Noltemy will face several immediate challenges, including helping to find a successor to Dudamel, one of the world’s most in-demand maestros, who has led the ensemble since 2009 and has been a key force behind its box-office success and expansive music education programs.Beckmen said the search could take “a couple years more, or maybe longer,” but that he was confident the orchestra could find someone who would be a draw like Dudamel.“Dudamel is great, and so is the orchestra here in L.A., which is, if not the best, certainly at the top of the field,” he said. “That’s not going away.”Asked whether the ensemble was interested in appointing a woman, Beckmen declined to comment. (Across the United States, women remain considerably underrepresented among music directors at top orchestras.)Noltemy said that “all talented conductors” would be considered, regardless of gender or race. “This orchestra,” she added, “is really so focused on the idea that the L.A. Phil has to represent its community, and its community is incredibly diverse.”Dudamel said in a statement on Wednesday that he looked forward to “welcoming Kim into our L.A. Phil family.”“Our extraordinary musicians and organization have shown the world a powerful new vision for what an orchestra can be, and how it can impact the community around it,” he said. “I am confident we will continue to push ourselves to even greater heights in the years to come.”In Dallas, Noltemy has built a reputation as a community-focused leader. She has expanded music education programs and worked to increase civic pride in the ensemble, including by staging more small-scale performances outside the concert hall.During her tenure, the orchestra has hired more women and people of color as conductors, composers and guest performers. The administrative staff has also grown more diverse; women make up a majority of the senior leadership team.In Los Angeles, Noltemy said, she would work to expand the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, known as YOLA, which Dudamel helped start, and which is modeled on El Sistema, the Venezuelan social and artistic movement. She is also eager for the Philharmonic to play a prominent role when Los Angeles hosts the Summer Olympics in 2028.The Philharmonic in a relatively strong position compared with other American orchestras. As of March, it was averaging about 89 percent attendance, back to where it was before the pandemic, even as the number of subscribers has fallen to 6,409, from 8,791.Noltemy follows in a line of pathbreaking chief executives. Ernest Fleischmann, who led the orchestra from 1969 to 1998, revitalized its lucrative summer programming at the Hollywood Bowl, fought to build Disney Hall and hired a young Esa-Pekka Salonen to be its music director. Deborah Borda, who led the orchestra from 2000 to 2017, built on those successes, opening the hall, hiring Dudamel, fostering ties with the city and championing new music. Smith, a protégé of Borda’s, helped drive the orchestra’s unconventional approach to programming.Beckmen said that he hoped Noltemy would serve for a decade or longer. She would like to stay until she retires.“The Los Angeles Philharmonic has long been the most amazing and interesting place,” she said. “I see this as the culmination of my career.” More

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      Student Orchestra Shouts ‘Mambo!’ and Meets Gustavo Dudamel

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      Our photographer followed 95 young musicians for six days as they prepared to perform with Dudamel, the next music director of the New York Philharmonic.The student musicians, dressed in jeans, T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts, were rehearsing an excerpt from “West Side Story” in a high school auditorium one recent afternoon. Then, as the trumpets blared and the timpani went wild, a voice broke out from the conductor’s podium.“Oy yo yo yo yo yo yo,” said the superstar maestro Gustavo Dudamel, who was leading the rehearsal. “You are not dancing together.”Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic’s next music director, paused for a moment, telling the students they needed a more precise rhythm and sound. Then he put his hands in his pockets and swaggered around the stage.Dudamel, the next music director of the New York Philharmonic, guided the youth ensemble, telling the students they needed a more precise rhythm and sound.James Estrin/The New York Times“This is cool, really cool music,” he said, eliciting laughter from the students. “We need something that goes with the nature of the body.”The students, part of a 95-member youth ensemble nominated by schools and arts programs and assembled by the New York Philharmonic, were at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan for six days last week. They were preparing for a concert on Friday with Dudamel, who has vowed to expand the Philharmonic’s presence in schools and in the community when he takes over in 2026.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Gustavo Dudamel Saves the Day at the Philharmonic

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      Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic’s incoming music and artistic director, stepped in after a guest conductor fell ill.It was lucky that Gustavo Dudamel was in town.On April 20, the New York Philharmonic announced that Juanjo Mena, who was scheduled to conduct the orchestra in three sold-out concerts starting on Thursday, had fallen ill. Dudamel, the ensemble’s incoming music and artistic director, was already expecting to be around to lead the spring gala on Wednesday.And so he saved the day. Stepping in for Mena, Dudamel, who assumes his Philharmonic post in 2026, led, in his only subscription concert appearances this season, a dichotomous program of dazzling crowd-pleasers and a thorny modernist work with utmost finesse. Pieces by Ravel and Pablo de Sarasate shone as they should, and the evening’s unlikely centerpiece, Ginastera’s Violin Concerto, was a 30-minute fever dream of serialist fancies and ferocities. (“Ibéria,” from Debussy’s “Images for Orchestra,” was cut after Mena bowed out.)An evening built from Spanish-tinged French pieces could have slipped into fiery and fragrant clichés, but instead it demonstrated the musical values that the Philharmonic’s audience can expect from Dudamel, including snappy rhythms, neatly managed transitions and fortes so punchy, they could leave a mark on your cheek. Orchestral tuttis had clarity and body from top to bottom.Dudamel used Ravel’s exquisite interplay of instrumental timbres to enliven the moods of “Rapsodie Espagnole,” which opened the concert. Sharply vivid rather than suggestively chimerical, the scenes and dances had a trim, finely honed character. Dudamel’s clockwork sophistication was better suited to the concert’s closer, Ravel’s beloved “Boléro,” in which he methodically developed tonal richness, sculpted the sound and dialed up the intensity over the piece’s 15-minute span. The sudden, layered climax had the effect of a tsunami: hitting and washing over the auditorium at the same time.The Philharmonic, which Dudamel will lead more frequently next season before officially undertaking his duties, is already showing signs of his influence. And he collaborated seamlessly with the evening’s soloist, the violinist Hilary Hahn, the orchestra’s artist in residence.A musician of poise and rounded tone, Hahn proved in the Ginastera that she can make just about anything sound beautiful. In her interpretation, the piece shed its acrid angularity. She folded trills, stops and sweet harmonics into unbroken lines, and when she harmonized with herself, she utilized the plushness and patience familiar from her Bach recordings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NY Party Fashion: Jon Bon Jovi Screening and Dudamel at Philharmonic Gala

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      This week, fans turned out for a new documentary about Jon Bon Jovi and took in a performance led by Gustavo Dudamel at the New York Philharmonic’s spring gala.Out & About is a column that covers the events where notable, powerful and influential figures gather — and their outfits. This week: We attended a screening of “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story” and the New York Philharmonic’s spring gala.A Rocker Greets His FansJon Bon Jovi stood blinking, rubbing his eyes, temporarily blinded on Thursday night by the lights from a row of photographers.Recovering, the musician said, “OK, I’m here now,” and then “Hi, love,” his eyes wide as he flashed a very white smile.He was standing just inside a movie theater at the South Street Seaport for a special screening of a new documentary series, “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story.” He approached the event, hosted by the Cinema Society and Hulu, with the same charming grit that helped make him famous.The show, now on Hulu, traces the musician’s path from his teenage years playing covers in Asbury Park, N.J., to mega-stardom with his band Bon Jovi, packing arenas with rock anthems. It also touches on his recent vocal cord trouble that led to surgery.“I’m wonderful,” said Bon Jovi, 62, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, with a full, feathery head of gray hair. “What you see in the film was a year and two years ago. It’s a work in progress. But it is really far down the road of recovery at this point.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Philharmonic’s 2024-25 Season: What We Want to Hear

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      Gustavo Dudamel, who takes over as music and artistic director in 2026, is getting a head start with three weeks of concerts and more programs.Next season, the New York Philharmonic will be without a full-time maestro or a designate music director for the first time in decades.But Gustavo Dudamel, the superstar conductor who takes over as the ensemble’s music and artistic director in 2026, will help fill the gap, leading three weeks of concerts, the Philharmonic announced on Tuesday.Dudamel, who currently leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is steadily ramping up his commitments in New York. He is already helping to shape programming and tours. And next season he might begin to take part in auditions, though talks are still underway, said Gary Ginstling, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive. Dudamel will also lead the summer concert series in city parks.“This is how we’re going to introduce Gustavo to literally tens of thousands of New Yorkers across the boroughs,” Ginstling said. “When you look at the totality of that, it feels like we’re making huge strides toward his imminent arrival.”Ginstling described the coming 2024-25 season as one of “experimenting and exploring.” There will be five world premieres, including works by Nico Muhly, Jessie Montgomery and Kate Soper. The pianist Yuja Wang will serve as artist in residence, and the dancer Tiler Peck will organize a series of evening programs. The Philharmonic’s musicians will create a program focused on the orchestra’s legacy.Here are five highlights of the coming season, chosen by critics and editors for The New York Times. JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Don’t More American Maestros Lead American Orchestras?

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      When Leonard Bernstein was named music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958, his appointment was hailed as a breakthrough for orchestra conductors from the United States.For decades, American maestros had been cast aside in classical music, seen as inferior to Europeans. But Bernstein’s rise, recently glamorized in the Oscar-nominated “Maestro,” showed that conductors from the United States could compete with their finest counterparts across the Atlantic.Commentators predicted a golden age for American conductors at the top American orchestras. Some followed in Bernstein’s footsteps — including protégés of his — and as recently as 2008, there were American music directors leading orchestras in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.Today, the only one of those ensembles still led by an American is the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Four of the 25 largest ensembles in the United States have an American at the podium, and at the nation’s biggest, most prestigious orchestras, American music directors are entirely absent.“It means that we’ve got a lot of work to do,” said Jonathon Heyward, who grew up in South Carolina and began serving as the Baltimore Symphony’s music director last fall. “We have to continuously think about ways to better relate to an American community.” (Heyward is one of those four American maestros at the largest ensembles today, along with Michael Stern in Kansas City, Giancarlo Guerrero in Nashville and Carl St.Clair at the Pacific Symphony in California.)Classical music has long been a global industry. The Berlin Philharmonic is led by a Russian-born maestro, Kirill Petrenko; the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Germany, by a British-born conductor, Simon Rattle. Just as maestros from overseas have assumed top conducting posts in the United States, American artists have gone to Europe, Asia and elsewhere to lead renowned ensembles. Alan Gilbert, the former music director of the New York Philharmonic, now has orchestras in Germany and Sweden.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More