“At the Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, a public school in Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park, the star of the show recently was Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel,” reports Jeffrey Brown on Tuesday (11/20) at the PBS Newshour. “He was there to open a new site for YOLA, the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, a program to offer free high-quality music lessons and support to students in underserved communities. ‘When I see them, I’m one of them,’ says Dudamel…. ‘I have exactly the same feeling as when I was sitting in the orchestra for the first time, 9 years old, 10-years-old boy, playing in the middle of the second violin section…. That was like, wow, this is the thing.’ … Today, still just 37, he… remains committed to changing the image of orchestras…. ‘We have to avoid … that we are on a mountain here … When the people see that they are represented by the best art … that is what we want to create.’ … Music, Dudamel says over and over, is a fundamental human right. ‘It’s a big idea, but it’s simple…. Our children in our times, they are not having access to that.’ ”
Posted November 26, 2018
In photo: Gustavo Dudamel with two musicians in Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s free music education program
