The 16th and penultimate winter season of Gustavo Dudamel with the Los Angeles Philharmonic were not as ambitious as the others. No big opera. Two complete symphonies in its “Mahler Grooves” festival, unlike its complete Mahler festival with unprecedented symphonies in 2012. In the next five months, the only dudamel appearances will be two weeks in August at the Hollywood Bowl.
Has the big exit of it started?
On the surface, this may appear in this way. By the start of his last Phil season at the end of September, Dudamel has concerts worthy of interest elsewhere. In his break to become a new York Philharmonic Musical Director in 2026, he closed the 2024-25 season of the 2024-25 Orchestra at Lincoln Center, launched his summer series at Central Park and opens his new season in September. He has to come to come to the London Symphony in Spain and Berlin Philharmonic at the world exhibition, Expo 2025, in Osaka, Japan. This summer, Dudamel leads “West Side Story” to Barcelona with a star casting that includes Nadine Sierra, Juan Diego Flórez and Isabel Leonard.
But not so fast. Dudamel made newer and better news with Los Angeles Philharmonic last weekend. Friday evening, he presented the first of Carlos Simon, inspired by Carlos Simon, “Good News Mass”, creating a frenzy near the concert hall of Walt Disney. The next day, the Phil jumped on a bus for the second of its pioneering appearances with Dudamel at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where the week before its concert ended with thousands of fans while singing: “The Phil! The Phil!” Phil! “
Dudamel's mission has always been to skip the borders of the genre. So he did it. “Perhaps these were the best weekends in our lives,” he told the crowd in the open air at the Coachella Love-Fest on Saturday evening.
The best orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, New York, Munich and elsewhere play popular concerts in parks, often awakening new audiences to their goods. But that felt a historical scope, the Phil having become under Dudamel an essential part of culture in a broader sense. It will be difficult to overcome, but that Dudamel who succeeds will become in his efforts to pass the word that some 300 years after the voter Karl Theodor hired 90 musicians to form a set for his court in Mannheim, in Germany, the orchestra.
Good news, however, apparently remains broken in many American orchestras in difficulty, as in many uncertain aspects of American life. Simon – who can be a composer in residence Newly disturbed Kennedy center In Washington, DC – noted in a discourse preconcerts that his initial idea for a “good news” came from his conscience during the pandemic of the essential need for the community. The Phil told him that he could write whatever he wanted and for all the instrumental and vocal forces he wanted as long as he kept the length at 30 minutes.
To say the composers that they may think that greatly means that they will think even greater. “Good News Mass” incorporates a very large orchestra, a jazz combo, a narrator, R&B soloists and Gospel, a Gospel choir and a film. It lasts almost 50 minutes. It's everywhere on the map.
Simon partially follows the traditional Catholic mass liturgy with new texts by Courtney Ware Lett and Marc Bamuthi Joseph who work through doubt and oppression, ultimately celebrating life. Bamuthi Joseph directs the service as a fierce prophetic preacher. The soloists, Alto Samoht and the tenor Zebulon Ellis, tip the room. Jason White and the samples become the collective voices of the affirmation.
Stylistically, Simon gently goes from charismatic symphonic writing through a wide range of African-American musical styles, leaving an improvisation room for vocal soloists. But the film by Melina Matsoukas, street scenes with a slowdown beautifully with idle in black and white, steals attention to the small musical goal and makes the mass significant itself (no text is projected) unnecessarily difficult.
“Good News Mass”, which seems inspired by the eclectic “mass” of Leonard Bernstein, written for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971, could, like her, effectively extend her presentation and choreographically rather than cinematographic presentation. And the good news is that the mass of Simon will indeed be played at Kennedy Center by the National Symphony, assuming that there are no more additional attempts to Annoy the programming by the new administration of the center. The Boston Symphony and the Chicago Symphony are additional co-comicers.
Dudamel, who has joyfully held Simon's various musical styles together, started the program with Bernstein's “Divertimento”, a collection of short and popular style, including dances and blues numbers. It can generally be rejected as trivial, but Bernstein led him with a nostalgia and character of character which found a new vibrant spirit.
Solist Randall Goosby interprets the second concerto of Florence Price violin with Gustavo Dudamel and the Phil at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
(Etienne Laurent / for time)
He followed this with the first performance of the Phil of the concerto for violin of Florence Price n ° 2, with Randall Goosby as an eloquent soloist. In this, her final score, written in 1951, she moved to a more impressionist kingdom in the short concerto to a single movement. Here, it looked more like a start than an end.
At Coachella, everything looked like a start. Dudamel directed pieces of orchestral candies the size of Tiktok – “The Ride of the Valkyries”, the first movement of the fifth symphony of Beethoven, the “imperial march” by John Williams and the opening of “also Sprach Zarathoustra” of Strauss. The same goes for the solo offer of the main cello Robert Demain of the prelude following cello n ° 1 of Bach and the associate solo violin of Bing Wang since the start of the Max Richter arrangement of “The Four Seasons” of Vivaldi.
Laufey joins Gustavo Dudamel and the Phil in Coachella.
(All J. Schaben / Los Angeles)
Dudamel on the Coachella stage.
(All J. Schaben / Los Angeles)
The two weekends, as evidenced by live flows, featured the Icelandic singer Laufey, who was called an orchestra girl, and the spectacular Argentinian hip-hop duo Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso, who entered a virtuoso dialogue with the orchestra. Maren Morris, Becky G and Zedd were on site the first weekend with LL Cool J, who closed the set with a striking mixture. The second weekend of the festival brought Natasha Bedingfield, Dave Grohl and Cynthia Erivo, who ended with “Purple Rain”.
It may seem that it was only the next step for Dudamel, who regularly invites the pop stars to join him and the Phil to Disney Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. He took the La Phil and Yola to the Super Bowl. But in most cases, they were more like orchestral accompaniment.
In addition, more and more pop star has been transformed into orchestral writing lately. Esa-Pekka Salonen, for example, runs a violin concerto from Bryce Draw Nationals next week with the Phil.
Coachella, on the other hand, not only put the phil's front and center in a pop arena, but also made the orchestra an equal partner in exhilarating music that updated the differences. For an hour every weekend, the Phil has become what few others in the arts or entertainment remain – authentic new conveyors.
