Over the past two weeks, Gustavo Dudamel, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic have been performing together as part of the Mahler Project, a landmark celebration of the Austrian composer’s symphonic works. Since the Project’s opening performance on January 13, the LA Phil and the Bolívars have been taking turns performing his symphonies as well as his Songs of a Wayfarer.

On February 4, the two orchestras cap off the LA portion of their collaboration with Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” at LA’s Shrine Auditorium – a performance that draws on the combined musical forces of the Bolívars, the LA Phil, 16 choral ensembles, and eight vocal soloists. The Mahler Project then begins its Caracas residency on February 7 with a performance by the Bolivárs of Mahler’s Second Symphony, “Resurrection,” perhaps one of Mahler’s most tender musical contemplations of life, mortality, and renewal. Watch Gustavo conduct Mahler’s Second Symphony, “Resurrection,” with the Bolivárs at the 2011 BBC Proms.

On February 18, the LA Phil and the Bolívars join forces in Caracas, Venezuela, for an extraordinary LA Phil LIVE cinema broadcast of Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” from the Teresa Carreño, Caracas, to theatres in the US and in Canada.

Click here to learn more about the Mahler Project and to purchase tickets.

Click here to buy tickets for LA Phil LIVE from Caracas on February 18.  

This April, Gustavo will return to Paris’s Salle Pleyel to conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Together, they will perform all four of Brahms’s symphonies over the course of two concerts. They present Symphonies nos. 1 and 3 on April 13 and nos. 2 and 4 on April 20. Gustavo collaborated with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in October 2009 in a performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. Click here to watch excerpts of the performance recorded live by Arte.


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“My love affair with Mahler started when I was a boy and was given a recording by my uncle. The first big symphonic piece I conducted at age 16 was Mahler's First Symphony. The works of Mahler have a very special place in my heart and to have my two families, the LA Phil and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, perform the complete cycle in both L.A. and Caracas is, for me, a dream come true."
This month Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Simón Bolivár Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela come together for a landmark celebration of the master symphonic composer Gustav Mahler. The music of Mahler has been a touchstone of Gustavo's musical life: as a teenager, Gustavo's first program as conductor of the Simón Bolivár Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela was Mahler's First Symphony. When he took the helm as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in October 2009, he also chose Mahler's First Symphony.

Beginning January 13, the LA Phil and the Bolivárs will perform all nine of Mahler's symphonies as well as selected orchestral songs. The two orchestras will share each other's homes as they give performances both in Los Angeles and Caracas. Their musical partnership reaches new heights in two performances of Mahler's Eighth Symphony. The LA Phil and the Bolivárs join forces with 16 choral ensembles and an international roster of soloists for Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand." The first performance of Mahler's epic orchestral work will take place at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles on Saturday, February 4. The second will take place at Teresa Carreño in Caracas, Venezuela on February 18 and will be broadcast in a LA Phil LIVE transmission across the United States and Canada.

Click here to learn more about the Mahler Project and to purchase tickets.

Click here to buy tickets for LA Phil LIVE from Caracas on February 18. 

This week Gustavo Dudamel conducts the orchestra and chorus of Milan's Teatro alla Scala in Mahler's Second Symphony, "Resurrection." Though Mahler abandoned his explicit narrative program of life and mortality for this orchestral work, the "Resurrection" symphony resonates with the spirit of renewal in the holiday season. Mahler's texts, based on German folk poetry, will be sung by La Scala's chorus and two soloists, soprano Genia Kuhmeier and mezzo-soprano Anna Larsson.

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Now in his fifth year as Music Director of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Gustavo Dudamel returns to Sweden this week for two concerts on December 14 and 15. After Mendelssohn's Third Symphony, “Scottish,” Dudamel and the orchestra are joined by guest soloist Yefim Bronfman for Brahms's Second Piano Concerto. Next March, Dudamel leads the GSO again with a program that includes Richard Strauss’s tone poems Don Juan and Also Sprach Zarathustra and Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, “Drumroll.” They then take the same program on a six-city tour across Sweden, Portugal, and Spain. 

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Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela return to Europe this autumn to perform concerts at Zurich's Opernhaus (November 20), Milan's Teatro alla Scala (November 21), and Rome's Santa Cecilia (November 23). The program for these three concerts includes Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony, Ravel's Daphnis & Chloe, and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.

Gramophone, the respected British classical music magazine, has named Gustavo Dudamel its 2011 Gramophone Artist of the Year. Past recipients of the award include Yo-Yo Ma, Michael Tilson Thomas, Riccardo Chailly, Cecilia Bartoli and Antonio Pappano, to name only a few. The announcement was made at the Gramophone Awards in London on October 6. While Dudamel could not be present to accept the award in person, he recorded a video thanking the publication and the public for their support.

Click here to see Dudamel's acceptance speech on YouTube

The second season of LA Phil LIVE, the orchestra’s acclaimed series of live high-definition transmissions to movie theaters in the U.S. and Canada, kicks off on October 9 with a concert exploring the works of Felix Mendelssohn and featuring the Dutch violin virtuoso Janine Jansen. Gustavo Dudamel plays dual roles as conductor and host of the broadcast. The program showcases three of the composer’s most evocative and romantic works: the vividly descriptive Hebrides Overture and the “Scottish” Symphony--both of which are musical souvenirs of Mendelssohn’s 1829 vacation in Scotland and the Hebrides islands--as well as his passionate Violin Concerto. More information is available at http://laphilLIVE.com.

Gustavo Dudamel opens his third season as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic with an all-Gershwin program featuring jazz legend Herbie Hanock at Walt Disney Concert Hall on September 27. The concert begins with the iconic Tin Pan Alley composer's Cuban Overture and his beloved An American In Paris. Then the multiple Grammy Award-winning pianist joins Dudamel and the LA Phil to perform arguably Gershwin's most famous work, the jazz hued Rhapsody in Blue. The evening is being recorded for a future broadcast on PBS's "Great Performances" sometime in early 2012.

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One of the highlights of Dudamel’s 2011-12 season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic is sure to be the world premiere of Mexican composer Enrico Chapela’s concerto for electric cello this fall. Titled Magnetar, the work will be heard for the first time on October 20 and 21, when Dudamel leads the orchestra and German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser in a program that features the new work as well as John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony.

Chapela’s composition style amalgamates elements of jazz, rock and the Latin-American tradition with classical serialist techniques. The new work has three movements: fast, slow, and brutal. As the electric cello is an electromagnetic instrument, Chapela decided to find the biggest possible magnet for the basis of his work, which led to his discovery and understanding of the biggest magnetic fields in the universe, known as Magnetars, a type of neutron star. Chapela, with the help of astrophysicists, learned about magnetars and their flares and discovered a way to translate scientific data of flare activity into sound frequencies--and therefore ultimately music notes--providing the base materials for this work.

Following the two concerts in LA, Dudamel, the orchestra and Moser travel to San Francisco to reprise the program on October 23. The next day, October 24, Dudamel and the orchestra present a second program at Davies Hall, this one featuring John Adams’s Tromba lontana, the U.S. premiere of Benzercry’s Rituales Amerindios, and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. These concerts are being presented as part of the San Francisco Symphony’s American Orchestra Series, which brings seven of the greatest American orchestras to Davies Symphony Hall.

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