Tuesday afternoon, the heat of spring crackled on an almost empty Hollywood bowl. The La Phil had lowered a solar visor on the stage for their rehearsals, where the music and artistic director Gustavo Dudamel led the orchestra through a few moments of heavy strikers from their next set this weekend.
On Saturday evening, the Phil will take place on a new field. They finally play the other place of green and world -renowned outdoor music which embodies the Southern California Idyll – The Festival of Music and Arts of Coachella Valley.
For Dudamel, 44, who arrived in Los Angeles 17 years ago to lead the Phil, playing Coachella was “a dream, since I started here,” he said in an interview behind the scenes of the bowl.
It is surprising that the two dominant musical institutions of Southern California have never officially associated themselves on stage before with an original set. But while Dudamel is preparing to make his emotional release to direct the New York Philharmonic next year, the timing was particularly poignant.
“I think we are still waiting to see who would take the measures to say,” Let's do this, “he said about the performance in Coachella. “It is wonderful because of all the work we have done in Hollywood Bowl, playing every summer with so many artists with different styles. I think the road brought us at that time to celebrate all these years in such an emblematic place where classical music is generally not part of the message. ”
The La Phil is not unrelated to pop musical collaborations, and the orchestras appeared in Coachella before (the film composer Hans Zimmer had a particularly memorable set in 2017). But this first crossover pursues a long tradition of Phil's musical directors sharing mutual curiosity with the other flagship musical industries of the city.
Gustavo Dudamel performed in 2008 as a new musical director of Los Angeles Philharmonic.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
“It starts with Zubin Mehta decades ago. He left a piece of him with the Phil that we still kiss today. He played with Frank Zappa, so he sort of broken this border,” said Meghan Umber, the Phil programming chief. “He started the first concert of John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl. And then Esa-Pekka Salonen brought new music and all these composers and crazy ideas in Los Angeles. Then, Gustavo just torn the doors.”
“Gustavo has been in this position for 17 years, and I think we started talking about Coachella 17 years ago,” added Johanna Rees, vice-president of the presentations. “Frankly, I have the impression that we waited for the ideal moment.”
For Dudamel, a Venezuelanian who came out of the youth music program of this country El Sistema, and who opened his mandate with a free Bowl concert presenting the new Los Angeles youth orchestra, this corresponds to its life value to bring classical music to young audiences.
This performance “represents a journey to make music accessible to everyone, but also to create a culture where people do not feel that classical music is far, not part of their lives,” he said. “What we want is that this old music kisses this moment.”
After a few post -comfortable chaotic years at the headliner Pop – Kanye West and Travis Scott Cancellations, the return of the division of Frank Ocean from a night – there is something counter -intuitive to see the flagship orchestra of the city on the same stages.
The founder of Coachella, Paul Tollett, “obviously does such creative and unexpected things in the desert of this festival,” said Rees. “You do not even know before arriving. So it was super exciting that people would only see it once, for two weekends. There will be people who discover an orchestra – what it looks like, looks like the emotional impact. I would say that the majority probably knows that for the first time.”
Certain pop-friendly guests, such as the composer Edm Zedd and the Icelandic jazz phenomenon Laufey, will join the Phil for punctual collaborations. While a large part of the program is envelope, rehearsals have suggested an explosive mixture of classical music made by a festival and large swings in almost all other genres in Coachella.
“It was a dream come true when Gustavo Dudamel and the Philharmonic, probably the best orchestra in the world, contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in executing` Clarity '' live with them on the piano, in the middle of some of the greatest compositions of all time, “Zedd told Times in an e-mail. “As many of you may know, classical music has done much of my life. In my fifth coachella, giving life to this special song in such an epic and cinematographic way is just surreal.”
Gustavo Dudamel heads the Los Angeles Philharmonic during a performance in the afternoon of the Mahler Grooves series at Disney Concert Hall.
(David Butow / for time)
Dudamel also seemed enthusiastic about the sequencing challenge, how to grasp and hold a crowd from the festival which could pass the orchestra en route to the Sahara tent soaked in bass.
“We have taken this amazing arrangement, which goes through Strauss' 'also Sprach Zarathustra,' 5th” by Beethoven, John Williams, `The Firebird '' from Stravinsky, everything is there,” he said. “It is the desire to really connect and make a well-balanced trip. The classic piece we play is inside the song they sing. “
The orchestra, unfortunately, will not have much time to stay for the celebrations of the weekend (they have Vivaldi sets in Disney Hall the nights and after).
But there could also be a pang of melancholy in the crowd, among the fans seeing the charismatic dudamel eminently leading to Coachella just as he wraps his warrant for the definition of the era to the
Although he will move to take the post of director of music and artistic at the New York Philharmonic, he will leave Los Angeles as a unique world capital, accessible and ambitious for orchestral music – a heritage that any successor Phil will surely have in front of the mind.
“It will always be my family,” said Dudamel. “But this is a highlight where we arrived, working with so many artists and by doing part of our identity.”
“Gustavo will no longer have the same title with us, but that does not mean that we abandon this,” said Umber. A spirit of collaboration is “now integrated into our nucleus in a way that we will always adopt”.
“This is the tip of the iceberg,” added Rees. “We are entering another phase, but all the artists who participate, he talks about all these ideas with them. I mean, some artists are ready to tour with him now. ”
This big heart set also arrives at a difficult time for the arts in America, because faithful institutions like the Kennedy Center have suddenly been bureaucrally emptied and stained by the rhetoric of the cultural war of the Trump administration.
This coachella concert will be a glamorous evening playing 125,000 young rowdy fans. But it is also an argument on the way immigration can invigorate and inspire creation, including countries like Venezuela that have been criticized by the United States government.
Gustavo Dudamel works with the youth orchestras system in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2022.
(Daniel Vielma)
This is proof of the resonance of the arts in all corners of American life, that new and various crowds can be moved by an orchestra and vice versa.
“You see that art, especially in difficult times, plays a very important action in healing,” said Dudamel. “People try to divide us. In complex situations, we talk about what we believe through the music we are fortunate to play. Art is important because it heals, it educates, it gives an inspiration space for people. In any context – difficult, good, happy, sad, terrible, wonderful – it's important. “
