Classical Revival

Classical music is one of my passions.  I love it.  I love to listen to it in the mornings.  It helps me focus when I have a big project, memo, or something that needs to be written or done.  I love to go listen to it live, to watch the orchestra or symphony perform together with or without soloists - I have learned many things about myself in doing so.  Sometimes it moves me, sometimes I get bored with it; sometimes I wonder how anyone could think that piece was lovely, and sometimes I get swept up in the artistic moment and beauty of it all.  Being relatively close to DC and the Kennedy Center, I have had the privilege to see some of my favorite soloists and conductors, as well as to discover some others that I had never heard of.

This week I get the privilege to cross off another one of my classical music idols, Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.   They are playing at the Kennedy Center, along with another one of my all-time favorite pianists, Jean-Yves Thibaudet.  Gustavo Dudamel is only a year older than myself and in his short life has managed to help transform, not only the musical world, but the lives of inner-city children by sharing his passion with them and offering them another route, another path in life.

60 Minutes has done several pieces on Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra, the youth orchestra that he founded in Venezuela and they just recently did another piece on Dudamel and his vision for the inner-city youth of America.  If you have a spare few minutes and are interested in one way that a person is using his passion to help change lives, watch the video below.


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