Dudamel

awesome - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cuzcz8Tjs0

Obligatory LA Times 'hey there's this guy that's arrived' profile. Plus:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef0115725132cb970b-800wi

They say it’s not right for an inter viewer to have a crush on her subject. Too bad. Get over it. Besides, I am in good company. Los Angeles has a mind-blowing crush on its new conductor—and rightly so.

Gustavo Dudamel is already a star, and he has already changed our city’s musical sensibility: Embracing classical music has become the rule, not the exception; expanding our youth-orchestra program has become a goal we can touch; we know how to spell Tchaikovsky as easily as we spell Madonna, how to explain and enjoy a concerto as easily as a jazz set; we can anticipate sold-out performances (some of them free); and we can relish the experience of listening—most of all, listening—to sounds that shatter every music lover’s expectations, every audience’s dreams. All you have to do is hear him once. He hasn’t yet fully moved into his modest offices at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, so we met in the Frank Gehry–designed Guest Conductor Suite, where he charmed me in an English deliciously tempered by the inflections of his native Venezuela.

I have stalked the Maestro (he prefers I call him Gustavo, but a formal moniker seems funnily appropriate for the slight but larger-than-life artiste) for months....

Etc.

When this guy came to the Royal Festival Hall I was working in the classical music store beneath. We stocked absolute reams of his stuff and it all sold. Members of his orchestra came in and bought DVDs of their own performances. It was all pretty sensational.

http://www.bucaramanga.com/blogs/mirada-latina/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/dudamel.jpg