The audience at Radio City Music Hall burst into cheers when Bernadette Peters walked onstage recently to join the conductor Gustavo Dudamel for a surprise encore. She was the star, but the night was his. He was feted by a Broadway legend and leading the New York Philharmonic as it debuted the theater’s new immersive sound system with a program of music by New York composers like Aaron Copland, George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein.
Two weeks later, on the other side of the country, Dudamel took the stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, his musical home since 2009. But instead of a two-time Tony Award winner, he was joined by a two-time Academy Award winner: Cate Blanchett, with whom he presented Beethoven’s music for the Goethe play “Egmont,” updated by the playwright Jeremy O. Harris.
After 17 years as the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s artistic and music director, Dudamel has begun an extended cross-country transition as he prepares to officially take on the same title with the New York Philharmonic in September. It is as much a new chapter for this 45-year-old conductor — his Radio City splash was delayed because of a snowstorm, just in case he had any doubt he was no longer in Los Angeles — as it is for New York’s 184-year-old orchestra, which has not had such a high-profile maestro since Bernstein.
Dudamel said that while his relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic “was great,” he was leaving because “I need this new chapter for me.”
Los Angeles has one of the most admired orchestras in the country. And it has a history of being led by conductors to match. Dudamel replaced Esa-Pekka Salonen, who is now returning as the orchestra’s creative director during the search for a Dudamel successor, and Salonen replaced Zubin Mehta.
When Salonen left, there “was just an outpouring of love for him,” said Deborah Borda, a former leader of the orchestras in Los Angeles and New York, and who was instrumental in bringing Dudamel to the New York Philharmonic. “And I think the same thing will happen with Gustavo.”
Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles, introduced Dudamel at his first Los Angeles Philharmonic performance as music director, at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009. “People are going to miss him,” Villaraigosa said, but added: “We prefer reveling in the 17 years than mourning that he’s leaving. He is moving on. Transitions are opportunities to reimagine.”
Still, the loss of someone so central to the civic and cultural identity of Los Angeles is an unsettling moment for this region, as much as it might be a moment of celebration for New York.
It has come at a time when Los Angeles is struggling to recover from devastating wildfires and dealing with the anxiety over raids by federal immigration officials. There are reminders of the end of the Dudamel era in banners that say “Gracias Gustavo: Dudamel’s Final Season,” on street lamps along Beverly Boulevard. There are commemorative T-shirts and posters on sale at the Disney Hall gift shop. It is hard to find an open seat at Dudamel’s performances there, as people begin to absorb his imminent departure. And the applause that greets his entrances onstage seem a little louder and longer these days.
His last performances as the orchestra’s music and artistic director at Disney Hall will be in June, followed by the official end of his tenure in August at the Hollywood Bowl, where he will conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — the same work with which he started this job.
“Dudamel has been Los Angeles,” said Eric Garcetti, a former Los Angeles mayor and an amateur pianist who once joined Dudamel and the Philharmonic onstage. “He is a literal part of the city. There are very few icons who have been as big as a neighborhood or the Hollywood sign. This isn’t about losing just a person. He is one of the cultural pillars of the past couple of decades here.”
Dudamel, in interviews at his soon-to-be office at David Geffen Hall in New York and at his soon-not-to-be office at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, said he was using this time to manage an appropriately elaborate farewell to Los Angeles while planning his first years in New York. It has been, he said, “intense because in the moment, I am in two waters.”
In an interview in New York, Dudamel said that people ask him how the city was different from Los Angeles. “They are completely different,” he added. “I connect with both, these 17 years in Los Angeles has been amazing, I love it, the people, the community. But this is a completely different vibe. The vibe of this city is very, very alive. It’s very prestissimo: You know, it’s a very fast tempo.”
He has filled his remaining schedule in Los Angeles with performances that are meant as a tribute to the city and his experience there. That includes programs devoted to the “Great Wall of Los Angeles” mural that the artist Judy Baca painted along the banks of the Tujunga Wash in the San Fernando Valley, and a three-night concert presentation of Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” with scenic design by Frank Gehry, the architect of Disney Hall and friend of Dudamel, who died in December.
Dudamel said he intended to keep a home in Los Angeles for at least the coming months, if not longer. (His principal home is in Madrid.) But he is now looking for a place to live in New York, focusing on neighborhoods close to Lincoln Center. And in interviews and discussions with colleagues on both coasts, he has been talking as much — more, really — about what is coming up in New York as he does Los Angeles.
“He wants — and I want — the New York Philharmonic to be absolutely active not just in the music life, but in the cultural life, the civic life of New York City,” said Matías Tarnopolsky, the orchestra’s president and chief executive. “That is going to be behind everything he does here.”
There are already signs that Dudamel’s arrival is heralding a new era for classical music in New York. The Philharmonic is planning a joint performance with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, the salsa and Latin jazz band led by Oscar Hernández, in May. The 2026-27 season will begin in September with a crush of events across the city, not just on the stage of Geffen Hall. The orchestra will return to Radio City, and bring two concert performances of Puccini’s opera “Tosca” to Carnegie Hall in November.
Dudamel and the Philharmonic are preparing to announce their ambitious schedule of events for next season in early March. But Dudamel will delay making some critical decisions about the scope and aspirations of his tenure to allow him to get a better sense of New York and the tastes and moods of a different kind of audience than in Los Angeles.
“When people ask me, ‘What will you do?’ I think you have to take the time before you can say what we are doing,” he said. “It’s like when I arrived to L.A. Of course I had a goal to make to improve things, to connect with the community, to create this festival, go to Coachella. But everything happens in a very natural path, no pushing anything, and I think it’s the same here in New York. We are starting in a very ambitious and wonderful way. But this will keep evolving.”
As Dudamel looks ahead to his years in New York, officials in Los Angeles are looking ahead to its years without Dudamel as they find his replacement, a process that seems unlikely to be resolved for at least another season. “He was one of the people who they used when they said Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics,” said Kim Noltemy, the president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “He is recognizable wherever he goes in Los Angeles. He’s a household name, and he’s a star at the same time.”
Garcetti said he was confident that Dudamel’s replacement would fit the orchestra’s recent history of renowned maestros. Still, after these 17 years, he suggested, Los Angeles might want to keep its expectations in check.
“We will get somebody good — maybe even great,” Garcetti said. “But they won’t be Dudamel.”
Adam Nagourney is the classical music and dance reporter for The Times.
The post Gustavo Dudamel’s Long Goodbye to L.A., and Long Hello to New York appeared first on New York Times.
