Coldplay get rehearsing with Dudamel’s youth orch
mainWatch this. Just watch.
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I’m mostly pro-Dudamel but I don’t know what there is to see here. They’ve made a slick video in a short time. We don’t hear the kids playing, there’s a running voiceover covering that. We don’t know what they’ll be playing at the event. There are no other details apart from the often-told changing lives through music story from the Social Innovations Manager. There’s a lot of style and flash with little substance which is what Dudamel’s detractors have been carping on since he got the job.
When the Phil’s marketing people call regarding season tickets and/or donations, I ask how much time Dudamel actually spends with the kids as opposed to the unseen teachers who run the program for most of the year. I’ve never gotten an answer.
I hope I’m missing something.
I’m a Dudamel’s detractors, and I could not been able to describe it better than you. Bravo!
You are missing nothing .. ever hear of flim flam
Yes, his predecessor wrote the book on it. But given the criticisms of the Phil’s PR machine, it surprised me that they’d hand so much ammunition to Dudamel’s detractors.
It’s LA, lala land, it’s Hollywood, it’s hype. The honeymoon with the Dude has been over for awhile, he’s no longer the wunderkind with the wild hair, his peers have surpassed him at better orchestras, he’s a thirty-something who sucks for to dictators for money, and the Super Bowl wants to exploit a bunch of Latino kids to accompany Cold Play so of course Dudamel will say yes.
That about sums it up.
He is 35 who gets invited to conduct Berlin and Vienna (among others) regularly, so which ones of his under-40 “peers have surpassed him at better orchestras”? The money that he keeps getting from the government (hardly a dictatorship when the opposition is able to win elections) is definitely not for himself but for El Sistema, which is still a good cause. Giving a bunch of kids an exciting experience of their lifetime does not sound like exploitation to me. It seems like they are not going to play a single note of classical music this Sunday, which is disappointing of course, but at least it is an opportunity to promote musical education.
Simple pleasures for simple minds.