by Antonio Mejías-Rentas
Autor/Author Carlos Chávez
‘THE DUDE’ IS BACK: The young Venezuelan director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is conducting several programs this week as part of America & Americans, his first festival with the orchestra he famously took over last fall.
According to Gustavo Dudamel, the festival is intended to make audiences look at the Americas as one extended land.
“When we speak of America, we speak of the whole continent,” the 29-year-old musician told La Opinión last week.
The festival’s various programs include music from U.S. and Canadian composers, aswell as Mexico’s Carlos Chávez, Venezuela’s Antonio Estévez, Argentina’s Alberto Ginastera and Brazil’s Heitor Villalobos.
A centerpiece of the festival is the Los Angeles premiere of Estévez’s Cantata criolla, a choral piece to be performed by the Philharmonic along with Venezuela’s Schola Cantorum choral group.
For the performances, April 29 to May 4 at Los Angeles’ Disney Hall, the orchestra has commissioned a film presentation by Venezuelan filmmaker Arberto Arvelo and additional texts written by Mexican novelista and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga.
As part of the festival the Schola Cantorum will also perform La pasión según San Marcos, a piece specially composed for the group by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. The performance coincides with the release of the first studio recording of La passion by Deutsche Grammophon.
The festival also marks an extended stay in the city for Dudamel, who also conducts the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden and the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. During this, his first season as director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dudamel is about to embark on a national tour with the orchestra, during which he will conduct several of the programs he has already presented in Los Angeles.
The May tour will include performances in San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago, Nashville, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey.
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