Whenever I listen to a children's orchestra, I learn. They feel everything, they enjoy everything, they have amazing energy.
Gustavo DudamelIt's not that people don't like classical music. It's that they don't have the chance to understand and to experience it.
Gustavo DudamelGoing to a concert can sometimes be very difficult. It can be a long journey. There's the ticket prices. But when the music goes to the community - not the community coming to the concert - they say, 'Wow! I didn't know that this music was so amazing!
Gustavo DudamelI think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.
Gustavo DudamelYou have to believe that things will happen, you have to work and love what you're doing.
Gustavo DudamelFor me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.
Gustavo Dudamel