The 28-year-old
Dudamel is just about the hottest young thing on the classical-music scene today—the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Venezuelan-born, jheri curl-sporting conductor is widely considered a prodigy. He started studying violin and composition at age 10, and won the Gustav Mahler Conducting Prize in Germany at only 23. His second Deutsche Grammophon recording,
Mahler 5 with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, became the only classical album on iTunes' "Next Big Thing” in 2007. Dudamel is a product of El Sistema, Venezuela’s children’s arts program, often noted as the best in the world. Singer
Linda Ronstadt even name-checked Dudamel in Congress, when she was pleading for more money for the arts. “As you may know, there is a conductor of staggering talent who has been hailed as the next Leonard Bernstein,” she said. “Perhaps you have seen him featured on
60 Minutes.”