The LA Phil’s 2025/26 season gala, also known as Gustavo’s Fiesta, encapsulates the transformational 17-year partnership between Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Over that period, they have accomplished artistic feats, expanded the idea of a symphonic orchestra, and played the brilliant finales on the program a total of 53 times, mining each performance for fresh insights and connections within the music.
Join us in saying “Gracias Gustavo” and get ready for the fiesta with some exciting music!
Listen to the playlist as you dive into the listening guide.
Falla’s Final Dance from The Three-Cornered Hat
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First LA Phil performance conducted by Gustavo: August 5, 2010, at the Hollywood Bowl
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Performances by Gustavo and the LA Phil: 5
The Final Dance, or “jota,” from Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat is a whirlwind of castanets, stomping rhythms, and Andalusian flamenco flair. Gustavo’s appreciation and advocacy for Spanish, as well as Latin American music, is a central part of his identity as a conductor and music director.
“Learning to dance is part of our culture—dancing is in our blood,” he says. “Latin music is all about dance, about rhythm. And we try to put this spice into all of our music.”
The Three-Cornered Hat represents the purest essence of a party with energy that is joyful and contagious.
Beethoven’s Allegro con brio from Symphony No. 7
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First LA Phil performance conducted by Gustavo: January 6, 2011, at Walt Disney Concert Hall
- Performances by Gustavo and the LA Phil: 17
As part of the Beethoven episode from the LA Phil’s Sound/Stage series, Gustavo asked, “What does pure, beautiful, unbridled joy sound like?” For some, the clearest answer would undoubtedly be Beethoven’s Seventh.
“No symphony makes a better case for the uselessness of words when it comes to expressing our highest highs,” Gustavo said. “Who needs to say ‘joy’ when Beethoven’s music can make you feel?”
Having conducted the symphony with the LA Phil a whopping 17 times (and countless more times with youth and professional orchestras all over the world) Gustavo says Beethoven, more than any other composer, fully embodies the idea that music changes lives.
The Seventh Symphony is like a river; it’s sheer joy. “It’s not the same water from one day to the next. It’s not a glass with water inside. And it’s good to play this music now.”
Dvořák’s Allegro con fuoco from Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”
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First LA Phil performance conducted by Gustavo: March 12, 2015, at Walt Disney Concert Hall
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Performances by Gustavo and the LA Phil: 20
It’s practically impossible to pick a single work in the entire classical repertoire as one’s favorite, but for Gustavo, the “New World” Symphony is among his top few.
“It’s one of my favorite pieces. It’s a piece that has been in my life since the very beginning when I was a student. It’s an evolution and such a beautiful piece,” he said. Gustavo recently recorded and released an album featuring Dvořák’s Ninth (alongside the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies) with the LA Phil in 2022.
Gustavo said, “the experiences that I have with Dvorak’s symphonies are unique and amazing […because of how he] expresses his interpretation of America, his vision.”
“From the New World” is, rightfully so, one of the most recognizable pieces of classical music. And still, fans and critics alike can find something new and refreshing in Gustavo’s interpretation. He “
Ravel’s “Le jardin féerique” from Ma mère l’Oye
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First LA Phil performance conducted by Gustavo: October 11, 2012, at Walt Disney Concert Hall
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Performances by Gustavo and the LA Phil: 5
If finales are often like fireworks, Ravel’s “The Fairy Garden” from the Mother Goose Suite is more like a slow, quiet, and inevitable sunrise. Gustavo has a gift for shaping this movement, so that it feels suspended in time, building from stillness into a shimmering climax that lingers in the air.
When Gustavo conducted the movement for an episode of Sound/Stage devoted to finales, he said that just like in life, “endings are often just beginnings to something else entirely…There’s only one thing a final movement, a third act, and proper goodbye will always have in common—they are never easy to get right.”
Placed within this Fiesta playlist, “The Fairy Garden” balances out the rhythmic drive and heroic intensity of Falla, Revueltas, Beethoven, and Dvořák. Its gentle, fairy-tale sentiment reminds us that finales don’t always need to be grand and thunderous to move us.
Revueltas’ “Noche de encantamiento” from La noche de los Mayas
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First LA Phil performance conducted by Gustavo: September 13, 2005, at the Hollywood Bowl
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Performances by Gustavo and the LA Phil: 6
What better way to cap off Gustavo’s Fiesta than with the piece that started it all? In 2005, Gustavo made his US debut at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducting Revueltas’ rambunctious La noche de los Mayas.
Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the “24-year-old conductor from Venezuela with curly hair, long sideburns, and a baby face accomplished something increasingly rare and difficult at the Hollywood Bowl. He got a normally restive audience’s full, immediate, and rapt attention. And he kept it.”
Swed continued: “Once into this arresting depiction of a night of the Maya’s revelry and enchantment, once the percussion department’s battery of drums got to beating and a conch shell called the Maya to carousing, the crowd clapped and whooped. That’s not just rare but a downright wonder at the Bowl on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s classical Tuesday and Thursday programs.”