Gustavo Dudamel quotes

Gustavo Dudamel is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist celebrated for his dynamic energy and passion for music. His innovative leadership has inspired young musicians around the world, especially through his work with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He continues to break barriers in classical music, bringing orchestral performance to new audiences. Here are 26 of his quotes:

With an orchestra you are building citizens, better citizens for the community.

Gustavo Dudamel

When people feel that something really special is happening on the stage, things change.

Gustavo Dudamel

It'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 Dudamel

I 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 Dudamel

Whenever I listen to a children's orchestra, I learn. They feel everything, they enjoy everything, they have amazing energy.

Gustavo Dudamel

I set out to create a means whereby music could be a way of vindicating the rights of the masses.

Gustavo Dudamel

In my imagination yes, I remember, when I was six years old, I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it's real.

Gustavo Dudamel

I think that I need to learn a lot, a lot.

Gustavo Dudamel

You learn a lot about each other from a tour, musically and humanly.

Gustavo Dudamel

For 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

I have eaten very well in Los Angeles. Marvelously!

Gustavo Dudamel

Classical music in Venezuela is now something like a pop concert. You can see people screaming or crying because they don't have a ticket.

Gustavo Dudamel

I want to work with the big orchestras. I want to have a big family.

Gustavo Dudamel

Going 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 Dudamel

It's a physical challenge. It's a spiritual challenge. I'm studying almost every day a different symphony, not returning to any one for a week.

Gustavo Dudamel

I love to travel, but sometimes it's nice to stay in one place.

Gustavo Dudamel

My material life is simple.

Gustavo Dudamel

My relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra brought me many times to London and I will always reflect positively on that early period of development with them - their patience, their warmth, their dedication.

Gustavo Dudamel

For me, Venezuela is very important, not just because it's a place I go to conduct, but because my family is there - my wife, my parents and my musical family.

Gustavo Dudamel

Los Angeles is a very special city. It's a great ethnic mix, a great cultural mix.

Gustavo Dudamel

A friend gave me a CD of the 'Pathetique' Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home, and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started 'ta ta ta taaa.' It was too long for me. I didn't understand it at first, but then I fell in love, in love, in love.

Gustavo Dudamel

I think the atmosphere of a Prom concert can change your life, in the best way. It's so deep, the feeling you have there. The audience is so close, and there are so many of them, that you feel they are almost embracing you.

Gustavo Dudamel