Gustavo Dudamel - El Maestro

Gustavo Dudamel is the new musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and it seems to be a marriage made in musical heaven. In one of the most populous Latino cities in the United States, it only makes sense that one of its top classical stars would be a young man from a lower middle class beginning from Barquisimeto, Venezuela.
Dudamel wasn't quite known as a child prodigy, but he comes from a musical background. His father was a violinist and his mother a voice teacher, so he had music in his household early in life. He didn't start playing an instrument until he was 10 years old, which is considered aged when talking about most prodigies, but he turned out to be very good, enough so that only a couple of years later he was enrolled into the Jacinto Lara Conservatory, where he studied violin with Jose Luis Jiminez. After that he went to study with Jose Francisco del Castillo at the Latin American Violin Academy.
At 14, he started studying conducting with Rodolfo Saglimbeni, and was named Music Director of the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. Later on, in 1999, he began