Whenever I listen to a children's orchestra, I learn. They feel everything, they enjoy everything, they have amazing energy.
Music is a fundamental human right
The challenge is not so much to change the sound. The challenge is to connect and to create something special.
My main goal, and it's a big one, is that every child has a chance to get close to music - as a right - that as they have access to food, health, and education, they get the chance to have art and culture - especially music.
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.
You have to believe that things will happen, you have to work and love what you're doing.
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.
With an orchestra you are building citizens, better citizens for the community.
I studied music since I was four years old, and from that moment I became part of a family. And that family has taught me things; not only musical things, but things I have to face in life, and that is where the success of the system lies
I set out to create a means whereby music could be a way of vindicating the rights of the masses.
When people feel that something really special is happening on the stage, things change.
When you play Mozart, it's so clean, it's so simple. It's the body naked.
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.
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.
You learn a lot about each other from a tour, musically and humanly.
Recently, I went to a disco with friends, and all the young people were saying, 'Dudamel, we want to go to your concert, but it's impossible because it's sold out.' It's really amazing.
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.
I want to work with the big orchestras. I want to have a big family.
My material life is simple.
I wanted to play my violin and have my musical expression through the instrument. But then I was really young when I had my first opportunity to conduct.
I think that I need to learn a lot, a lot.
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.
I have eaten very well in Los Angeles. Marvelously!
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!
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.
