Dudamel backs Tár for an Oscar and Blanchett for a baton
OrchestrasFrom Vanity Fair:
If Cate Blanchett is indeed prepared to take a break from acting, then she might already have a new gig lined up, thanks to her Oscar-nominated performance in Tár.
On Monday night at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, Vanity Fair hosted a conversation between Blanchett, Tár writer-director Todd Field, and powerhouse conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the current music director at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who recently made headlines by accepting the same role at the New York Philharmonic.
From the start, it was clear that Dudamel was quite taken with Tár and its approach to a world he knows well—he even makes a cameo in the film, glimpsed on one of his album covers. Calling the film “wonderful,” “unique,” and “very credible,” Dudamel told Blanchett, “Your way to conduct, your gesture, is very natural.” In return she joked, “Are you offering me a job?” He didn’t blink: “Absolutely, you can become music director in Los Angeles!”
Later, more seriously, Dudamel asked if Blanchett had any interest in becoming a real conductor. “This is not an interview of that sort!” she said with a laugh. “But no, it was extraordinary…. When we had to prepare on Zoom, our conducting consultant, Natalie Murray Beale, said, ‘Nothing is going to prepare you for the experience of you giving the downbeat, and that sound coming back at you and through you.’ It was an unforgettable, life-changing experience. I mean, you get to do that every day.”
“You have to feel prepared, but you cannot predict what is going to happen,” Dudamel said of his work on the podium. “That is something that you don’t learn in a school of conducting. You learn the factual things, you learn the structure, the interpretation, the history, but no teacher will tell you what is going to happen there. You felt that.”An overarching theme of Tár is the power inherent to being a conductor, something Dudamel says he sensed even as an 11-year-old stepping on to the podium for fun. “For me, conducting is more than leading something; it’s trying to guide people through inspiration,” he said. “When I did my first rehearsal, I was 11 years old, my maestro was late, I was in the violin section, and I went to the podium and started to play-imitate him and other conductors. I was making jokes and all of that. In a moment, everything got pretty serious. I was like, This feels good. Power feels good. It was the most natural thing. I was not prepared for that.”
More here.
Someone posted a few days ago that “Tar” had been spotted at Disney Hall in LA. Although I’m sure that was a quip, Cate Blanchette really might have (or could have) traveled several miles to the east and been there. Or a case of “life imitating art.”
Dudamel is where Dudamel is, is due in large part to his preternatural ability to work the establishment and those with high influence in it, whether it’s the Venezuela regimes and their dictators or the Hollywood system and their stars.
You commit the common fallacy mistaking correlation for causation. Also non of the above is relevant when it came to Göteborg making him chief. Or Berlin and Vienna Phil repeatedly inviting him as a guest. Both would not invite anyone who has no substance, certainly not a second or even third time.
So Vanity Fair hosted a public conversation about Tár – a film about power and sexual misconduct in classical music – with Gustavo Dudamel. It sounds like they had a fun time, cracking jokes and talking about Mahler.
The elephant in the room is of course that Dudamel shot to fame thanks to a program (El Sistema) and a mentor (José Antonio Abreu) that knew all about the misuse of power and sexual misconduct. But far be it from Vanity Fair to connect the film to uncomfortable issues in the real world. Much better to stick to the jokes.
I think Daniel Craig should be offered a job in intelligence. His acting is so convincing that he must be able to do it for real.
“I was like, This feels good. Power feels good. It was the most natural thing.” The usual overblown and overhyped narcissism.
Seriously, the chucking with an axe-kind-of-conducting Cate displays is the last thing a serious orchestra wants to see from the podium. Who on earth instructed her that way? Personally I still love Cate the actress, despite hating the movie.
Well have you ever worked with the consultant conductor to the film Natalie Murray Beale? I wouldn’t even know where to begin….
Celebrities talk too much.
It’s fluff for USians. Celeb gossip us empire Distractions abt nothing rather than classical music.
If Cate Blanchett were appointed Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic to succeed Gustavo Dudamel, not only would the Tinsel Town audience not know any difference, I honestly think the musicians would not mind one bit, and John Williams and John Adams would be over the moon that their works would be conducted by An Oscar Winning Actress.
It’s a great movie. Don’t miss it.