“Gustavo Dudamel displayed a new facet of his talent in a July 31 concert at the Hollywood Bowl, leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a suite from the film score he recently composed, his first,” writes Rob Lowman in Tuesday’s (8/5) San Jose Mercury News (California). Scheduled open in U.S. theaters on October 3, the film, Libertador, is “directed by his friend Alberto Arvelo and [stars] his friend Édgar Ramírez. Both are fellow Venezuelans, and the movie was inspired by the life of Simón Bolívar.… When Arvelo first told the conductor about the arc of the screenplay, Dudamel says, ‘I tried to imagine musically what he was telling me.’ He suggested pieces of music for the filmmaker to listen to, which might become part of the score. But in his head, he kept imagining his own soundtrack accompanying the images Arvelo described…. The next thing he knew, he was composing the score. Early in the process, Dudamel says, he invited five-time Oscar-winning composer John Williams over to the house to hear some of what he’d put together…. ‘He said, “Don’t create a symphony. Sometimes only use one element, to create tension.” ’ ” Mark Swed’s review of the LA Phil’s performance of the Libertador Suite appears in Saturday’s (8/2) Los Angeles Times.
Posted August 8, 2014
