In 2005 I made the first of several memorable visits to Venezuela. I was composing an opera, A Flowering Tree, loosely inspired by Mozart’s The Magic Flute, that was to premiere not in Caracas, but in Vienna as part of Peter Sellars’ New Crowned Hope festival. The festival was a typically whimsical Sellars brainchild: an inspired mash-up of artists and performers from all over the globe, from Africa, the South Pacific, the Middle East, Latin America. For Vienna it was something defiantly and deliciously off-grid, provocative and colorful. The plan for my opera was to have both the marvelous Schola Cantorum de Caracas chorus and a Venezuelan orchestra created especially for the event by José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema. We would rehearse in Venezuela and then all pile on a plane and go to Vienna for the premiere.
On my first morning in Caracas I was taken to the El Sistema center, a vast concrete complex of rehearsal halls and practice rooms. Abreu, a quiet and modest man, balding with enormous eyeglasses, reminded me of photos I’d seen of some Latin American intellectuals such as Jorge Luis Borges, and indeed I found out later that he was not only a gifted conductor and teacher but also had a degree in economics. “We have a special treat for you,” he said with a smile, as he led me into a large rehearsal space where a huge orchestra of over 100 instrumentalists, a chorus of about the same number, and several solo singers were all gathered. Then a young guy in jeans and a T-shirt with curly black hair and looking about 18 years old (he was in fact all of 24) sauntered in and hopped up onto the podium. He gave a swift downbeat that the violins responded to with a frenzied tremolo, which then launched a violent surge in the cellos and basses. I said to myself, “Mahler Two…and on a Saturday morning in Caracas! I know I’m going to remember this.”
They went straight through to the end, the young conductor doing it all from memory. That was, of course, Gustavo. Every now and then Señor Abreu would gently touch my arm and beam at me in delight. He had reason to be so proud. Not only had he created this center with its multiple orchestras and programs for music education and performance here and elsewhere in Venezuela, but he had also mentored this immensely talented young conductor from his early adolescence, providing him with the kind of opportunities and support that would be almost impossible to find in other countries. By the time Gustavo was in his mid-20s, he had already conducted much of the major orchestral repertory and was a fully developed and confident conductor with the experience that normally would take 30 to 40 years to acquire.
I returned a year later to rehearse A Flowering Tree, this time not in Caracas but in Barquisimeto, located about 200 miles to the west and the city where Gustavo was born and grew up. We rehearsed evenings in a warehouse-style space with windows open to the surrounding neighborhood. Parents and their kids would perch in the window frames and listen. The heat and humidity were onerous and only partially mollified by several huge electric fans that made so much noise we got into a rhythm of rehearsing until drenched in perspiration, then taking a break for the fans to roar until things cooled down. My music was a challenge for some of the players, but the vibe was always joyful, and I returned from each rehearsal with a sense of having participated in a truly communal experience, something quite different from more businesslike orchestra rehearsals back home. This convivial sensibility of music-making was the environment in which Gustavo grew up.
If you look up Barquisimeto, you’ll see that it’s sometimes called “Musical Capital of Venezuela.” The people are, just like Gustavo, warm and generous. The local Conservatorio Vicente Emilio Sojo every week sees over 1,000 students and community members. This is a city where economic life is stressed beyond imagination but in which music—“classical music,” no less!—is deeply valued. In both cities the teenagers I met all seemed to think Tchaikovsky and Beethoven were every bit as cool as whatever pop music they had on their boom boxes. What also struck me was how beautiful the surrounding countryside was with its distant mountains, rolling hills, and verdant grasslands. People often struggle to get by, but for them music is essential.
Gustavo’s astonishing talent was immediately obvious to me from that one morning Mahler rehearsal, and it continues to this day to affect any musician who encounters him. In rehearsal he communicates with occasionally colorful metaphors and a self-effacing humor, the latter a quality not always present in the job description of maestro. He has an enviable capacity to absorb a score quickly, knows the “core” repertoire so thoroughly it’s almost like instant recall for him. But beyond the brilliance and virtuosity of his art he is blessed with a kind of wisdom that normally comes only after many years. You’d say, “He was born already wise.” His is a sort of intrapersonal maturity, a self-confidence free of vanity and ego that puts everyone, collaborators, listeners, performers, at ease.
Over the years since we first met, I’ve had the pleasure and the privilege of hearing him conduct many of my pieces, some of them in world premieres, most of them with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And I’ve witnessed or heard about performances of other contemporary works he’s done, some of them exceedingly gnarly, always with the same care and intuitive understanding that he brings to Mahler or Beethoven or Stravinsky—really challenging scores by Oliver Knussen, Andrew Norman, Gabriela Ortiz, Ellen Reid, and Thomas Adès.
In 2009 the Philharmonic asked me to compose a piece for Gustavo’s first official program as Music Director. I wanted to do something that not only celebrated his arrival on the scene but that would also include my “take” on LA history and culture. The result was City Noir, a jazz-inflected symphony infused with tropes from film noir scores from the ’40s and ’50s. The piece turned out to be a bear (I know because I’ve since conducted it many times), and Gustavo had to learn it, rehearse it, and perform it amidst a week of almost absurd media attention. It was an “only in LA” event—I can testify because my wife and I were seated next to Tom Hanks and his wife. I don’t know how he managed to keep his sanity during that very intense couple of days with a myriad of celebrities, newscasters, well-wishers, and family all begging for attention, but what we who know him understand is that once he steps onto the podium his powers of concentration take over, and he has the extraordinary gift of focusing on the matter at hand.
I’ve watched Gustavo at work with YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), an ensemble of his own creation modeled after his own youthful experiences and populated largely by Hispanic teens from the greater LA area. He works entirely without condescension, treating the young players as if they were the Philharmonic, shaping phrases, fine-tuning tricky rhythmic passages, adjusting balances, and, with his laser-sharp ear, getting intonation spot-on. Anyone lucky enough to attend a YOLA rehearsal can understand how this contact with young musicians recharges his batteries and keeps him inspired. I remember one time when he burst out of his dressing room shouting excitedly, “John, John, come look at this!” He took out his iPhone and proudly showed me a video of him, having returned to Caracas after a long absence, conducting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra in Short Ride in a Fast Machine, a piece that I’ve heard some of the best professional orchestras come to grief with. They were absolutely rocking, and his delight was palpable (and so was mine).
He is a celebrity, a rare star in the firmament of classical music, but he treats his fame lightly with his characteristic modesty. His musical mind is comfortable with the most daunting of challenges, yet in essence he is a warm and generous soul, and, like those friends I made in Barquisimeto, he is the essence of simple humanity.
Gustavo Dudamel has conducted the following works by John Adams:
City Noir (world premiere), Harmonium, Absolute Jest, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Grand Pianola Music, Slonimsky’s Earbox, The Gospel According to the Other Mary (world premiere), Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? (world premiere), Frenzy: a short symphony (US premiere), I Still Dance, Nixon in China (Paris Opera)
John Adams is a composer and conductor and holds the John and Samantha Williams Creative Chair at the LA Phil.