New York poaches a superstar

Los Angeles is used to the arrival of new superstars, ready to dazzle.
That happens in sports, mostly – Kareem, Magic, LeBron, Gretzky, Beckham, etc. But it also happened in the classical-music world: In 2007, Gustavo Dudamel (shown here), 26, was designated as the incoming music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Jason Schwartzman, the actor-director-producer, once recalled that debut concert. “It was so exciting and exilarating,” he said. “The second he began, there was such a contagious feeling in the room.”
Now that excitement will cross the continent. It was announced this week that Dudamel will move to the New York Philharmonic, beginning in 2026.
This is something TV viewers will notice. Dudamel is already a PBS star; now he’ll be in the hometown of “Live From Lincoln Center,” “Great Performances” and “American Masters.”
The news was greeted ecstatically in some circles. The New York Times had front-page mega-stories on two straight days.
Imagine it in sports terms: Imagine Magic or LeBron moving to the Knicks; Babe Ruth or Roger Maris being sold or traded to the Yankees.
(Okay, those last two actually happened. And they were big.)
Now Dudamel – approximately half the physical size of those guys – may have a big impact in New York, as he’s already done in Los Angeles. Back in 2015, Schwartzman was linking with Roman Coppola (his cousin) and Paul Weitz to produce “Mozart in the Jungle,” an award-winning Amazon drama/comedy about a charismatic young Latino conductor.
That quickly brought Dudamel to mind. “He came up through the Abreu system in Venezuela, which is a youth orchestrta,” Weitz said. That’s “a system (with) both wealthy kids and poor kids.”
Dudamel was in between the extremes, the son of a trombonist and a voice teacher. He began studying the violin at 10 and conducting at 14. At 18 he was conducting the national youth orchestra and soon was winning international prizes.
Still, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s move was a bold stroke. The previous four music directors (spanning 47 years) had included two celebrities (Zubin Mehta and Andre Previn), plus Carlo Giulini and Eza-Pekka Salonen; now that job was being handed to a zestful 26-year-old.
Banners hung from Los Angeles streetlights. Schwartzman recalled the excitement of that first night: “I had never seen so many people smiling.”
Schwartzman has lots of classical music in his roots. His grandfather (Carmine Coppola, Francis Coppola’s father) was first flutist for Arturo Toscanini in the New York Philharmonic … his great-uncle (Anton Coppola) was conducting in his 90s … his mom (Talia Shire, of “Rocky” fame) is a classical buff. But he hadn’t been a big fan until that Dudamel debut.
“It confirmed so many things about music, art … about his arrival in Los Angeles,” he recalled. “It was an exciting night and it was wonderful.”
Here was a young man – his curls flying in wayward directions – savoring the sound. Roman Coppola said it “confirmed that classical music can be thrilling and electric, on par with all the rock bands.”
As it happens, the New York Times has pointed out, the Los Angeles job has advantages:
— The Los Angeles Philharmonic almost has classical fans to itself. The New York Philharmonic competes with the Metropolitan Opera and a stream of outsiders performing at Carnegie Hall.
— The New York Philharmonic plays in a 1962 Lincoln Center hall that was (until being renovated during the pandemic) widely criticized. The Los Angeles Philharmonic is in Disney Hall, a much-praised, 2003 design by Frank Gehry, and spends summers at the Hollywood Bowl. Even the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra now has a Gehry-designed building.
The Los Angeles group has thrived, more than doubling New York in annual income. Dudamel has pleased the classical buffs, while adding new fans (including Latinos and youths); he’s also fit the Hollywood setting. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he’s conducted for a “Star Wars” movie and for Steven Spielberg’s remake of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”
Now he’ll step into a job once held by Bernstein (and by Mehta, Mahler, Stokowski, Toscanini and more). He shares Bernstein’s flair and popularity, but not his knack for verbalizing the arts.
For that part, you could blame the fact that English isn’t his first language … or you could say it just isn’t his style. A pandemic-era PBS series had Hollywood Bowl concerts, supplemented by Dudamel conversing with performers. The result – full of bland pleasantries – was instantly forgettable.
But that’s a minor factor, as Dudamel prepares to leap from one media center to the other. Once he picks up the baton, magic happens. TV will be there to capture it.