With an extravaganza, the Dudamel era in LA approaches its end

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel at the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, Feb. 10, 2026. (Jake Michaels/The New York Times)

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

There was “Bravo Gustavo!” a musical tribute that John Williams wrote for his friend Gustavo Dudamel, the outgoing music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which premiered the piece while Williams cheered from his fifth-row seat at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

There was a new production of Richard Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” led by Dudamel and with sets by Frank Gehry, another friend and collaborator of the conductor’s.

And last week, the audience laughed and clapped as Dudamel nestled his head onto the shoulder of cellist Yo-Yo Ma (also a friend) as they sat together and played music boxes during the premiere of Angélica Negrón’s concerto “Mundillo.”

In all, Dudamel’s farewell to Disney Hall was a three-week extravaganza of concerts, operas, stage-filling choruses, poetry, commissions by new composers (with an emphasis on Latino artists), favorites by old composers and a blur of curtain calls that ended Sunday. It was an appropriately frenzied encapsulation of his time in Los Angeles, 17 years in which he established himself as a force not only in music but also in the life of this city.

“All of these three weeks embrace — are a symbol — of all of what we have been doing these years,” Dudamel said in a recent interview between rehearsals. “This orchestra is a very virtuosic orchestra with a very warm sound, open to be flexible to play all styles of music. Maybe that can be part of the legacy that I can leave, and also what is coming from the past.”

At the concert Sunday, Dudamel received an ovation — from the crowd, his players and the chorus — that lasted for nearly 12 minutes. He wove through the orchestra, hugging and shaking hands, before blowing a final kiss to the players, waving to his audience and exiting to the left of the stage.

Dudamel has another goodbye to come at the Hollywood Bowl in August, with his truly final concerts concluding an exit that has stretched out for nearly three years. Soon after those performances, he will officially begin his tenure as music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic.

Signs that read “Gracias Gustavo” decorate the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, April 17, 2026. Dudamel’s last concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall as the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s maestro were a symbol of his impact after 17 years. (Jake Michaels/The New York Times)

For whatever questions there may have been when the Los Angeles Philharmonic took a chance on Dudamel, a 28-year-old Venezuelan, in 2009, he has left a major imprint on the orchestra. He has appointed 54 of the orchestra’s 106 members. He helped established the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles as a beacon for young aspiring musicians, particularly from the less wealthy parts of the region, and a source of pride for their families. (Six current and past members of the youth orchestra appeared at Sunday’s concert to recite “América,” a work of prose and poetry by Mexican novelist Guillermo Arriaga.)

Dudamel has embraced canonical, audience-favorite composers like Mahler, Mozart and Beethoven. But he championed with perhaps even more fervor adventurous composers such as John Adams, Philip Glass and Ellen Reid, who wrote “Earth Between Oceans” for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic this season.

“Some musicians or conductors might have felt afraid of the way the piece is sort of crazy,” she said. “He leaned into the energy of it. And the orchestra threw it back to him — in both cities. He is striving to make different pathways for people, to keep the music alive and keep it contemporary” in all the ways he can.

Since Dudamel’s first year in Los Angeles, when he presented the Americas and Americans festival, he has highlighted music by Latino composers, such as Roberto Sierra and Gabriela Ortiz — who has received nine commissions from the orchestra under Dudamel, including “Mujer Arena,” which premiered Thursday.

“He has been remarkably open to ideas, out-of-the-box ideas,” said Esa-Pekka Salonen, Dudamel’s predecessor, who led the Philharmonic from 1992-2009 and was in the audience Sunday. “If you look at his legacy, apart from very great concerts, there were lots of commissions, a really intense commitment to new music and new composers. His support for Latin American composers has been stunning. He’s going to leave a very, very vibrant, dynamic orchestra to his successor.”

And Dudamel, with his unusually high profile — a celebrity in a city filled with celebrities — changed the way people thought about classical music in Los Angeles. He challenged the elitist stereotype of the intimidating orchestra leaders; Salonen said that when Dudamel once took him barhopping on the east side of Los Angeles, ending at a bar vibrating with salsa music, “everybody knew him.”

“The Latino community,” Salonen added, “people talk to him, and with such pride.”

Dudamel said that from his earliest days, Los Angeles audiences proved receptive to music that swerved beyond the comfortable classical diet. By the time he steps down, he will have conducted 62 premieres of works commissioned by the Philharmonic and led programs featuring Latino music, jazz, salsa and pop. He collaborated with the Deaf West Theater on a production of Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio” for hearing and deaf operagoers.

“When I came here, a lot of this music was kind of exotic,” Dudamel said. “And I think it’s not anymore exotic. Right now, it’s something that has become part of the repertoire.”

Dudamel and the Philharmonic performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2025, sharing a bill with, among others, LL Cool J and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. He took the youth orchestra to the Super Bowl in 2016, playing with Coldplay at halftime.

“Gustavo can give you a Mahler from memory at Disney Hall anytime,” said Emmanuel Ceysson, the Philharmonic’s principal harp. “And the next day, he is giving you Carlos Vives at the Hollywood Bowl with the same involvement and joy. And it doesn’t feel wrong or disingenuous in any way, doing the light stuff. I admire that so much.”