After gaining acclaim in Los Angeles, conductor Gustavo Dudamel takes on New York

NEW YORK (AP) — Gustavo Dudamel jumped up and down on FAO Schwarz’s giant keyboard during his first trip to New York as a 14-year-old. He’s returned three decades later with far more numerous and somewhat smaller instruments at his disposal as music director of the New York Philharmonic. “It’s a lot about that bubbling energy, this city,” he said this week at his office in David Geffen Hall.

Now 45, Dudamel took over as music and artistic director last week after 17 celebrated seasons leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is the 27th man to head the New York orchestra, following luminaries that included Gustav Mahler, Willem Mengelberg, Bruno Walter, Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez. A product of Venezuela’s El Sistema music education program, Dudamel was a violinist with the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela when he played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in October 1995 and traveled with the orchestra by bus for a concert at the United Nations.

“They said we were going to cross a tunnel that is under the river, and we were: `Like, what?’ That was kind of another world,” Dudamel said. “I remember before getting to the river, there were the Twin Towers. Then I saw Statue of Liberty, and then they took us to the U.N.

And then they took us to the toy store. We were like in paradise.” High-profile start mixing genres Dudamel’s early schedule is a whirlwind. An opening concert at Radio City Music Hall on Sept.

10 was hosted by actor Liev Schreiber and featured Lizzo, St. The celebration continued with an after-party high atop Manhattan in the Rainbow Room. “Gustavo Dudamel is not an easy person to describe,” Schreiber told the concert crowd.

“Imagine if you added a teaspoon of Billy Joel, an ounce of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a cup of Tito Puente to a dash of Barbra Streisand.” Dudamel shifted downtown the next day for a Sounds of Remembrance performance at the World Trade Center arts center for the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “Music belongs so profoundly to moments like this,” Dudamel said softly. But when words can no longer reach where we need them to go, sometimes music can.