Gustavo Dudamel

Gustavo Dudamel, who was born in 1981 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, received his musical education through the countrywide pedagogical network known as “El Sistema.” In 1999, the 18-year-old conductor was appointed Music Director of the Sinfónica de la Juventud Venezolana – now known as the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra – which he continues to lead. Dudamel came to international attention when he won the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg in 2004. He subsequently went on to make his debut with many acclaimed orchestras, including the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. From 2007 to 2012 Dudamel helmed the Gothenburg Symphony, and since the fall of 2009 he has served as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which in the meantime has extended his contract to 2022. In Los Angeles he has moreover intensively focused on his work with young people through the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), which is based on the El Sistema model and which also represents a kind of orchestral academy. In the 2016-17 season Dudamel will perform a cycle of all of Schubert’s symphonies in Los Angeles, which will be paired with the orchestral lieder of Gustav Mahler. He will also conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in their legendary New Year’s concert. Dudamel has also been successful in the field of opera: in the fall of 2015 he conducted Mozart’s Figaro at the Berlin Staatsoper; in April 2016 came his debut at Vienna Staatsoper with Puccini’s Turandot, and he subsequently led Bernstein’s West Side Story at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Gustavo Dudamel has received many awards, including the Premio de la Latinidad in 2007, the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize in 2009, and the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 24 March 2007 with the Sinfónica de la Juventud Simón Bolívar, in a program of works by Gustav Mahler.

August 2016