Jamie is not the first to compare Dudamel to Bernstein, a titanic predecessor and the only other conductor whose name might reasonably appear as a Jeopardy! clue. Bernstein understood that classical music needed an evangelist and a face; it’s Dudamel’s charisma—not his knack for interpreting Chopin—that compels a lunch table of high school students to look up from their sandwiches when he passes them at Lincoln Center during the photo shoot for this profile and shriek. His signature hair helps too. (He confirms he has never used a gel or mousse, but he does make an effort to patronize salons that are familiar with its texture. Once, in Sweden—land of the tall and towheaded—a hairdresser refused to touch a single strand. “I think he saw an alien,” Dudamel says.)
Dudamel is humble, but not blind. “Artists have an ego, and it’s natural,” he says a few days later. He and I are talking about the perils and paradise of Los Angeles, where stars and their self-regard can run wild. Dudamel inherited his mentor Abreu’s conviction that music can build bridges and illuminate a better world. “What happens in an orchestra is fascinating,” he says. “Different instruments, different cultures, different visions. Different people with different political views. This is the thing we need in the world.”
Dudamel’s resolute optimism has, at times, looked to his critics like willful blindness. In years past, he faced sharp criticism for continuing to work in Venezuela as its then president Nicolás Maduro suppressed dissent and plunged the population into a series of humanitarian crises. Despite functioning as one of its most prominent, if unofficial, cultural ambassadors, Dudamel remained silent while Venezuela descended into chaos. He resisted the pressure until 2017, when he did at last break with the regime in an op-ed denouncing its antidemocratic crackdown. The government then made clear that he should not visit. When Abreu died in 2018, Dudamel missed the funeral. Even now, he resists commenting on Venezuela’s political situation, deflecting to say that his focus is on El Sistema, which relies on government funding, and humanitarian aid. In August, his final performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic will be a benefit concert for earthquake relief. “There’s still a lot of hope there,” he says.
He’s not naive, just disciplined and decades older than he was when classical music greeted him as a savior. His riot of curls has started to gray. Sometimes, it falls to his teenage son, Martín, to introduce him to new music. (Martín’s mother is Dudamel’s ex-wife, Eloísa Maturén; he married the Spanish actress and director María Valverde in 2017.) It occurs to Dudamel in the midst of our conversation at the United Palace that he should be exercising more diligently, the better to keep up with his frantic pace. More than once, his emphatic gesticulating has caused tennis elbow.
