Gustavo A. Dudamel

Conductor and violinist Gustavo Dudamel Ramírez currently serves as the Music & Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Music Director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. He is scheduled to become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026, starting as Music Director Designate in 2025.

Dudamel was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela and began violin lessons as a child but was drawn to conducting from an early age. At the age of 13, as a member of his youth orchestra, he put down his violin and picked up the baton when the conductor was running late. In 1996, he was named Music Director of the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. In 1999, at the age of 18, he was appointed Music Director of the Simón Bolívar Youth Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, composed of graduates of the El Sistema program. Dudamel gained international attention when he won the inaugural Bamberger Symphoniker Gustav Mahler Competition in 2004. Dudamel went on to become the music director of the Gothenburg Symphony (2007–2012), where he now holds the title of Honorary Conductor. He became the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009. Dudamel also held the position of Music Director of the Paris Opera from 2021-2023.

Dudamel is also an international advocate for the power of music to unite, heal, and inspire. Inspired by his own experiences, the LA Phil, and its community partners founded YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles) in 2007, now providing 1,500 young people with free instruments, intensive music instruction, academic support and leadership training. His many initiatives to expand and reach audiences include an “Orchestra of the Future,” made up of young people representing five continents and over a dozen countries as well as an opera production in collaboration with Los Angeles’s Deaf West Theatre and deaf performers of El Sistema Venezuela’s Coro de Manos Blancas (White Hands Choir).