Youth Movement
By Kyle MacMillan
In 1943, the New York Philharmonic’s little-known assistant conductor, Leonard Bernstein, catapulted into the national spotlight, when he was featured on the front page of the New York Times after brilliantly filling in at the last minute for guest conductor Bruno Walter. He went on to be heralded as one of the greatest conductors ever, as well as making important contributions roles as a composer, educator, and humanitarian.
Something similar happened with Venezuelan-born Gustavo Dudamel. In 2005, the newcomer made his US debut at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and became an almost instant sensation. Two years later, the orchestra took a big chance on him, appointing the still-budding 26-year-old as its Music Director, a position he began two years later. “We instantly knew,” wrote Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed in early July, recalling that electrifying debut appearance.
Dudamel, 43, has gone on to become a conducting superstar with crossover into movies and pop music and has led the Los Angeles Philharmonic—already respected under previous music director Esa Pekka-Salonen—to greater heights.
“The ascendancy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is the salient event in American orchestral life of the past 25 years,” wrote Alex Ross, the influential music critic for the New Yorker, in 2017.
In February 2023, in what was seen a huge coup for the orchestra, the New York Philharmonic appointed him as its next music director, a position that—notably—Bernstein held from 1958 through 1969. He begins his duties in 2026. “What I see is an amazing orchestra in New York and a lot of potential for developing something important,” he told the New York Times at the time. “It’s like opening a new door and building a new house. It’s a beautiful time.”
In his addition to his skills as podium leader, Dudamel might be best known as an educator, and it is in both those capacities that he will be seen August 6 when he brings the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela to the Ravinia Festival. Typical of the maestro’s diverse programming with his constant emphasis on the now, the program will consist of John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine along with Antonio Estévez’s Mediodía en el Llano, Alberto Ginastera’s suite of four orchestral dances from Estancia, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.
The appearance is part of an American tour that will also include stops at three other prominent venues—Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, Carnegie Hall in New York City (part of its World Orchestra Week celebrating international youth orchestras), and the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, MA.
The National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela—in its fifth generation, formed in 2023—arrives at Ravinia for a concert August 6 and, the following morning, a side-by-side rehearsal/workshop with Dudamel in a similar spirit to the four-day National Seminario Ravinia, which took place last month.
The National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela, which comprises some of the Latin American country’s most talented musicians ages 10–17, was formed in 1995 by José Antonio Abreu (1939–2018), a much-honored music educator and former minister of culture. The current iteration of the ensemble, which is led by music director Andrés David Ascanio Abreu (nephew of the founder), made its debut in 2023 and undertook its first international tour to Geneva, Switzerland.
The group is an extension of El Sistema, Venezuela’s innovative music-education program founded by the late Abreu. Since its creation in 1975, the principles of El Sistema have garnered worldwide recognition and spread to nearly 80 other countries, including the United States, where there are 140 instrumental-music programs inspired by its success.
“It’s all around the world,” Dudamel said in a Los Angeles Philharmonic video, “children listening, watching other children, doing music, being like a family, trusting each other. That is a dream, really—music as a fundamental human right. That, for me, is the most important thing.”
Dudamel is arguably El Sistema’s most famous alum, becoming involved with the program in 1986 as a budding violinist and getting his professional conducting start in 1999 as Music Director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, the national youth orchestra of Venezuela.
One of the largest North American El Sistema programs is Sistema Ravinia, which operates under the auspices of Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play, a multifaceted portfolio of education and community engagement offerings. In its 11th year, the music program serves hundreds of primarily Black and Latino elementary- and middle-school children in Waukegan and the Austin and Lawndale neighborhoods of Chicago.
The morning after the August 6 concert, students from eight Chicago-area music programs (all of whom are invited to the concert) will sit side-by-side with members of the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela for a rehearsal/workshop focused on Jean Sibelius’s Finlandia led by Dudamel. Taking part are participants from Sistema Ravinia as well as the Chicago Arts and Music Project (CAMP), Chicago Metamorphosis Orchestra Project (ChiMop), Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative (CMPI), Elgin Youth Symphony, Highland Park High School, Merit School of Music, and Midwest Young Artists Conservatory (MYA). Dudamel is leading a similar event during the New York stopover at Carnegie Hall.
The morning event is a kind of follow-up to Ravinia’s second National Seminario, which ran July 7–10 and brought together 130 students from El Sistema programs across the United States, Canada, Greece, Mexico, and Sweden. Under the tutelage of Marin Alsop, Ravinia’s Chief Conductor, and Lead Seminario Conductor Jessica Altarriba, the young musicians participated in highly focused orchestral training and presented a culminating concert on the Pavilion stage side-by-side with their mentor musicians from the National Orchestra Institute + Festival. Finlandia was one of the event’s featured works.
That Dudamel is leading the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela’s North American tour and presiding over the August 7 rehearsal/workshop is hardly surprising considering his deep ties to El Sistema and his tireless work to ensure that other musically gifted youth, no matter their socio-economic standing, get the same opportunities he did.
To that end, he played a key role in the 2007 founding of the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in partnership with the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and the Parks and Harmony Project. According to the Philharmonic’s website, it now serves nearly 1,700 young musicians in five under-resourced neighborhoods across the city, providing free instruments, musical instruction, and academic support. Dudamel continues to work extensively with YOLA, including an appearance by him and members of the ensemble during the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show alongside pop stars Coldplay, Beyoncé, and Bruno Mars.
“When you give an instrument to a young person who doesn’t have any hope, you are giving a world of possibilities,” Dudamel said on the Los Angeles Philharmonic video. “In music, you have to listen to each other. You have to create harmony with other instruments. You have to listen differently. And when you apply that in society, you are a different person. You are a different human being.”
The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s $14.5 million Beckman YOLA Center opened in 2021 in Inglewood, CA, with a 272-seat concert hall and rehearsal spaces. The space, in a converted bank building, was designed by acclaimed architect Frank Gehry, who also crafted Disney Hall and Millennium Park’s sleek Pritzker Pavilion.
“It is not only an orchestra,” Dudamel said of YOLA in the Philharmonic video. “It is not only a music school. This is a program for hope and inspiration. I believe that music plays a very important role in the times that we live in. For us as artists, as musicians, it’s a very important message that music is more than just entertainment. It has the power to transform society because it unites, it heals, because it allows us to be connected to beauty that is essential in the world we live in.”
An April 2024 story in the New York Times provided a glimpse at Dudamel’s teaching methods and suggested what the young participants at Ravinia might expect on August 7. It described the maestro working with a group of students in New York on an excerpt from Bernstein’s famed musical, West Side Story. (Yet another tie between Dudamel and his celebrated predecessor.)
Dudamel gets the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela physically engaged in a rehearsal, similar to a moment described in New York where he explained the feel of a moment of music: “We need something that goes with the nature of the body.”
“Oy yo yo yo yo yo yo,” said the conductor during the rehearsal. “You are not dancing together.” According to the article, he then explained that they needed a more precise rhythm and sound and even moved around the stage to suggest the feel of the strutting, self-assured gang members in the musical. “This is cool, really cool music,” he said, eliciting laughter. “We need something that goes with the nature of the body.”
In keeping with everything he has done to date in his career, Dudamel has vowed to expand the New York Philharmonic’s presence in schools and in the community when he takes over the orchestra in 2026. Dudamel said in the Times article that his aim was not to start a version of YOLA in New York but to deepen partnerships with schools and community programs so that the Philharmonic could become “something that represents the desires, the dreams, the values of young people.”
“We will not save classical music by selling tickets in a certain way,” he said. “No. It’s really about making the institution a part of the community in a very deep way.”
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Kyle MacMillan served as classical music critic for the Denver Post from 2000 through 2011. He currently freelances in Chicago, writing for such publications as the Chicago Sun-Times, Early Music America, Opera News, and Classical Voice of North America.