Gustavo Dudamel was born on 26 January 1981 in Barquisimeto, a town approximately 350 kilometres west of Caracas. He took lessons in harmony, general music training and counterpoint at an early age. From the age of ten, he studied violin with José Luis Jiménez, Francisco Díaz and Rubén Cova at the Jacinto Lara Conservatoire and with José Francisco del Castillo at the Latin American Violin Academy.

At twelve, when he stepped in for an absent conductor at a rehearsal of the Barquisimeto Youth Orchestra, he realized that he had a predilection for the art of conducting. He began his studies in conducting in 1995 with Rodolfo Saglimbeni and it was not long before Gustavo Dudamel had taken up the position of Associate Conductor of the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, followed a year later by the post of Assistant Conductor. From 1999 he received tuition from José Antonio Abreu, the same year in which he was appointed Musical Director of the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. In subsequent years Dudamel undertook concert tours with the orchestra to Chile, Mexico, the USA, France, Italy and Germany, including a concert at the Philharmonie in Berlin. Back in Venezuela, he was appointed Musical Director of the Youth Orchestra of the Andean States (La Orquesta Sinfónica de Juventudes de los Países Andinos – C.A.F.) and Principal Conductor of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas.

In 2004 Gustavo Dudamel won the Bamberg Symphony’s first Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition. Since then he has worked regularly with Sir Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado and
Daniel Barenboim, and is in demand at all the big international concert venues:

in 2005, for example, he made his début with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall in London during the International Conductors’ Academy; he has given enthusiastically received concerts with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv; he has stepped in at short notice at the BBC Proms to replace Neeme Järvi with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra; and he has given his first concert during the Beethoven Festival in Bonn’s Beethovenhalle. In addition, he has made his début at the Verbier Festival, with Camerata Salzburg, with the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and has conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl.

Dudamel signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon and recorded his first CD for the label in 2006: Beethoven’s 5th and 7th symphonies. His second album is a recording of Gustav Mahler’s 5th Symphony – both recordings were made with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.

This was followed by appearances with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic and opera engagements performing Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Mozart’s Don Giovanni at La Scala, Milan. As of the 2007/08 season, Gustavo Dudamel takes over as Principal Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony, and from 2009/10 he will take up the post of Music Director with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.