Venezuelan maestro Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 2026, the prestigious institution announced on Tuesday.
” Today [mardi]I am honored to be named the next artistic and musical director of the New York Philharmonic, and to walk in the footsteps of Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini and Leonard Bernstein”, the 42-year-old conductor confirmed on Twitter.
One of the highest paid conductors in the world and one of the best known, Gustavo Dudamel now combines the musical direction of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, since 2009, and the Paris Opera, where he arrived in 2021, on a six-year contract.
A fervent defender of greater access to music, Gustavo Dudamel, son of a trombonist and a singing teacher, is a pure product and one of the most illustrious representatives of El Sistema, the National System of Orchestras for Youth of Venezuela, a well-known popular classical music education project founded in 1975.
As comfortable conducting a Mahler symphony as the music of Star Wars or the last West Side Storyby Steven Spielberg, he is considered one of the most talented conductors in the world.
Recognizable by his curly hair, in 2016 he led the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra for a duet with Coldplay at the Super Bowl halftime concert, the most-watched annual event on television in the United States. .
With this recruit, the New York Philharmonic, the oldest American musical institution – it was created in 1842 -, reaffirms its ambitions, after the pharaonic renovation at 550 million US dollars of its setting, David Geffen Hall, at Lincoln Center .
The room, which reopened this season, has a new design and much better acoustics.
Expected for the 2026-2027 season, on an initial five-year contract, as artistic and musical director, Mr. Dudamel will take up the duties of deputy musical director in New York a year earlier, during his last season in Los Angeles. .
Until then, he will conduct the New York Philharmonic as a guest for three dates in May.
The current musical director of the “Phil”, the Dutchman Jaap van Zweden, had already announced that he would leave after the 2023-2024 season.