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Stephanie Shapiro, MBA, MSW, CFRE
Director of Development | 678-520-5325 | stephanie@atlantamusicproject.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ATLANTA MUSIC PROJECT INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN INTERNATIONAL ORCHESTRA FESTIVAL FEATURING THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC AND GUSTAVO DUDAMEL
TRIP TO MEXICO CITY MARKS ATLANTA MUSIC PROJECT’S FIRST PERFORMANCE ABROAD
FEBRUARY 26, 2018, ATLANTA, GA – The Atlanta Music Project (AMP) has received an exclusive invitation to bring its young musicians to Mexico City, February 28 to March 4, to participate in an international orchestra festival featuring the Vienna Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. AMP participants will perform in a special orchestra concert comprised of 300 young musicians from around the Americas. Just four programs (ATL, LA, NYC, Boston) from the United States have been invited to send students. The Gustavo Dudamel Foundation will provide lodging while in Mexico City; Southwest Airlines will cover the round-trip international airfare for AMP participants.
“Encounters” – Music Unites the Continents
#LasAmericasEncuentros
This February-March, Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, the 37-year-old Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is taking the Vienna Philharmonic on its first “Americas” tour, beginning at Carnegie Hall in New York and concluding at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires with stops in Florida, Mexico City, Bogota and Santiago de Chile. It is an extremely meaningful tour for the Venezuelan maestro, bringing the Vienna Philharmonic to his home continent and symbolically uniting North, Central and South America.
As part of the upcoming tour, Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, abbreviated INBA), Secretary of Culture and the Arturo Márquez Foundation (Fundación Arturo Márquez) have partnered with the Gustavo Dudamel Foundation (Fundación Dudamel) to create a four-day intensive Art and Citizenship workshop for young musicians from across the Americas.
From March 1 to 4, 300 young musicians from artistic and community programs of the National System of Musical Development in Mexico (Sistema Nacional de Fomento Musical en México) from Canada, the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Argentina and Chile will participate in rehearsals, discussions and final performance at the majestic Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
The workshop will be conducted under the guidance of Maestro Dudamel alongside an international faculty of world-class teachers and educators. The repertoire includes Arturo Márquez’s “Alas (a Malala)“, dedicated to the Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize, Malala Yousafzai, who fought for education as a fundamental right of children everywhere, and Antonin Dvorak’s popular “New World” Symphony, a work inspired by indigenous and African-American musical traditions.
A champion of the belief in music’s power to unite and inspire, Dudamel is particularly committed to the idea of the “United Americas.” Said Dudamel, “the Americas are a united essence. The culture of the Americas – north, south, central – is inspired by the landscape, the people, the folklore of these amazing countries. That’s a beautiful connection, and I believe that the culture of these places breaks borders. Boundaries don’t exist, divisions don’t exist…an entire continent, as one, exists. America as one: that is what this tour symbolizes.”
Many of the participating young musicians will come from local education initiatives promoting music education in underserved communities. Together, they will explore the cultural unity of the Americas and offer a timely celebration of harmony, equality, dignity, beauty and respect through music. Dudamel continues, “If we are to advance as a society, we need to open children’s minds to new thinking and let them spread their wings and fly.”
The Atlanta Music Project has selected seven young musicians to participate in this international event. All seven participants are members of the AMP Symphony Orchestra program at the City of Atlanta’s Perkerson Park Recreation Center, and attend Atlanta Public Schools (Maynard Jackson High School, Sylvan Hills Middle School and Wesley International Academy). “For several years, these young musicians have demonstrated a passion and steadfast commitment to their musical development through the Atlanta Music Project, and I am excited for them to experience this incredible opportunity to travel to Mexico City and perform under Maestro Dudamel. Thank you to the Gustavo Dudamel Foundation and Southwest Airlines for their support,” said Dantes Rameau, co-founder and executive director of the Atlanta Music Project.
Nyasjah Brooks, 15, viola
Alivia Carter, 16 double bass
Lailah Carter, 13 violin
Donovan Fuller, 13, violin
Danielle Liburd, 17, cello
Joshua Sheperd, 13, double bass
Landon Wilkins, 15, violin
About the Atlanta Music Project
Founded in 2010, the Atlanta Music Project provides more than 5,000 hours annually, of intensive, tuition-free music education for underserved youth right in their neighborhood. Now serving 300 students at six sites, AMP provides all its students with an instrument, a teaching artist, classes in Symphony Orchestra; AMPlify, the choral program of the Atlanta Music Project; the AMP Academy, providing advanced musical training to AMP’s most talented and dedicated students; and the AMP Summer Series, a music festival and school. AMP music ensembles perform 40 concerts per year. Its members have participated in Georgia All-State ensembles and have performed in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and. Aspen. In March of 2018, AMP musicians head to Mexico City for their first international performance. In 2015 Clayton State University established the Atlanta Music Project Endowed Scholarships, providing college scholarship funds for AMP students. AMP’s program partners include the City of Atlanta Department of Parks & Recreation, and The Kindezi Schools. AMP is the recipient of the prestigious 2016 Bank of America Neighborhood Builders award. In 2016 and 2017 the White House named AMP one of the top 50 after-school arts programs in the nation. For more information: www.atlantamusicproject.org.
About Gustavo Dudamel
As an internationally renowned symphonic and operatic conductor, Gustavo Dudamel is motivated by a profound belief in music’s power to unite and inspire. He is currently serving as Music Director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and Music & Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the impact of his leadership extends from the greatest concert stages to classrooms, cinemas and innovative digital platforms around the world. Dudamel also appears as guest conductor with some of the world’s most famous musical institutions: in 2017/18, he tours Europe with the Berlin Philharmonic, and takes the Vienna Philharmonic on a tour of the Americas, with concerts in New York’s Carnegie Hall, Mexico City’s Bellas Artes, Bogotá’s Teatro Mayor, and the Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile, as well as the famed Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. This season also sees Dudamel’s return to the opera house, conducting a new production of Puccini’s La bohème at the Opéra National de Paris.
With Dudamel now in his ninth season as Music & Artistic Director, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has dramatically expanded the scope of its community outreach programs, most notably through his creation of Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), influenced by the philosophy of Venezuela’s admired El Sistema, which encourages social development through music. With YOLA and diverse local educational initiatives, Dudamel brings music to children in under-served communities of Los Angeles. These programs have in turn inspired similar efforts throughout the United States, as well as in Sweden (Hammarkullen), Scotland (Raploch) and around the world.
For the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Dudamel, not only is the breadth of audiences reached remarkable, but also the depth of programming. LA Phil programs continue to represent the best and boldest in new music, including numerous premieres and commissions by composers such as John Adams, Philip Glass, Bryce Dessner, Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho. A series of concerts focusing on Mozart’s late works kicked off the season, as well as Festival CDMX, featuring the music and artists of Mexico. The Winter and Spring of 2018 pay tribute to the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein, with performances of Mass and Chichester Psalms. The season also features a Schumann festival, including a new production of Das Paradies und die Peri, staged by Peter Sellars. In early 2018, the LA Phil also tours the United States and Europe.
Now in his 19th year as Music Director of the El Sistema project in Venezuela, Dudamel remains committed to his vision that music unites and transforms lives, and he advocates the combination of music and the arts as essential to the education of young people around the world. Dudamel’s commitment to young people and music is fuelled by his own transformative experience in El Sistema, a program initiated by José Antonio Abreu in 1975. In addition to his ongoing commitment to the children, teachers and orchestras of El Sistema in Venezuela, Dudamel devotes much of his time to education and programs promoting social change through art. Dudamel has appeared at the United Nations and the White House to raise awareness for the role of music education in social development. Further afield, he has worked on numerous occasions with El Sistema Japan and with the Sendai Youth Philharmonic in the wake of the 2011 tsunami. He actively supports projects such as Big Noise in Scotland, Vienna’s Superar program, SerHacer in Boston, and El Sistema Sweden, with whom he initiated an international “Orchestra of the Future,” comprising young people from five continents, to perform on the occasion of the 2017 Nobel Prize Concert.
Recordings, broadcasts and digital innovations are also fundamental to Dudamel’s passionate advocacy for universal access to music. His discography includes landmark recordings of John Adams’ Gospel According to the Other Mary (commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic); the sound track to the motion picture Libertador, for which Dudamel also composed the score; Mahler Symphonies 5 and 7 with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra; and Mahler 9 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A unique performance of Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand,” featuring the combined forces of the LA Phil, the Bolívars and over 1000 choristers and children from across Venezuela, was captured for DVD/Blu-Ray and broadcast live to cinemas in the US and Canada. A film documentary, Let the Children Play, featuring Dudamel, was also shown in over 500 movie theaters nationwide. A special charity LP release of Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic raised funds for music education projects in Latin America, and children from Vienna’s El Sistema-inspired Superar program participated in his most recent Deutsche Grammophon release of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, also with the Vienna Philharmonic. Dudamel has independently produced an all-Wagner recording available exclusively for download, a complete set of Beethoven symphonies for digital learning, and a broadcast of two Stravinsky ballets with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in cooperation with the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall.
Gustavo Dudamel has been featured three times on CBS’s 60 Minutes and was subject of a PBS special, Dudamel: Conducting a Life. He appeared on Sesame Street with Elmo, with Charlie Rose, Conan O’Brian, and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Most recently, Gustavo had a cameo role in Amazon Studio’s award-winning series Mozart in the Jungle, guest-conducted on the soundtrack for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and, together with members of YOLA, became the first classical musician to participate in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, appearing alongside pop stars Coldplay, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars. In 2017, he was the youngest-ever conductor to lead the Vienna Philharmonic’s famous New Year’s Day Concert, watched annually by over 60 million people in 90 countries.
Gustavo Dudamel is one of the most decorated conductors of his generation. He received the Americas Society Cultural Achievement Award in 2016, and the 2014 Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society from the Longy School of Music. He was named Musical America’s 2013 Musician of the Year, one of the highest honors in the classical music industry, and was voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. In October of 2011, he was named Gramophone Artist of the Year, and in May of the same year, was inducted into the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in consideration of his “eminent merits in the musical art.” The previous year, he received the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT. Dudamel was inducted into l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres as a Chevalier in Paris in 2009, and received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Centroccidental Lisandro Alvarado in his hometown of Barquisimeto. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg in 2012. In 2008, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra was awarded Spain’s prestigious annual Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts and, along with his mentor José Antonio Abreu, Dudamel was given the “Q Prize” from Harvard University for extraordinary service to children. He was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2009.
Gustavo Dudamel was born in 1981 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. He began violin lessons as a child with José Luis Jiménez and Francisco Díaz at the Jacinto Lara Conservatory. He continued his violin studies with Rubén Cova and José Francisco del Castillo at the Latin American Academy of Violin. His conducting studies began in 1993 when he was hired as an Assistant Conductor with the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. In 1996, he studied with Rodolfo Saglimbeni and was named Music Director of the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. In 1999, he was appointed Music Director of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra and began conducting studies with the orchestra’s founder, Dr. Abreu. Dudamel was brought to international attention by winning the inaugural Bamberger Symphoniker Gustav Mahler Competition in 2004. He then went on to become Music Director of the Gothenburg Symphony (2007-2012), where he currently holds the title Honorary Conductor. Inspired by Dudamel’s early musical and mentoring experiences, the Gustavo Dudamel Foundation, a registered charity, was created in 2012 with the goal of promoting access to music as a human right and a catalyst for learning, integration, and social change.
For more information about Gustavo Dudamel, visit his official website: www.gustavodudamel.com. For information about The Gustavo Dudamel Foundation: www.dudamelfoundation.org
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