Laurence Vittes's Travel Diaries

Bogota Colombia, 2014

Gustavo Dudamel plans to conduct his first ever complete Beethoven symphonies cycle at the Teatro Mayor in July 2015.

I was recently in Bogotá, Colombia, for the press launch of the classical music season at the Teatro Mayor and Biblioteca Julio Mario Santo Domingo. Since it opening five years ago, it has fulfilled the mission of the Domingo family who imagined and built it, and the vision of Ramon Osorio who directs it. The Teatro juts out into a flat urban landscape in a series of rectangular concrete shells. Inside the space is open and welcoming, a gracious mix between a cultural palace and a convention center, with two splendid concert halls and a warren of media, green and storage rooms.

The highlight for Angelenos was the announcement that Gustavo Dudamel would conduct his first ever complete Beethoven symphonies cycle at the Teatro in July 2015.

What makes this significant for Los Angeles is the remarkable connection that exists between Bogotá and Gustavo Dudamel, the young Venezuelan music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. More than just a convenient stop on the tour, the fact that Dudamel is conducting his first Beethoven cycle in Bogotá, with his Venezuelan Simon Bolivar Orchestra, is a affirmative plea for cooperation between two countries each with many lessons to teach and learn.

Dudamel recently wrote me that, "Both my orchestra and I have a long history with Bogotá and with Colombia. Firstly, we are neighbors and brothers, sharing a common, extraordinary history and culture. We feel like we are in our home-away-from-home when we are performing in Bogotá which is why we probably give more concerts there than anywhere else on tour in South America!” The special place Bogotá holds in Dudamel’s heart stems in part from the fact that Colombia modeled its youth orchestra program on the Venezuelan el sistema program out of which Dudamel arose.

It was this spirit of friendship and shared interest and enterprise built on mutual, collaborative development that has impressed me about the Teatro and the extraordinary young, smart, ambitious team that operates its complicated mechanisms of production, education, marketing, communications, design, financial planning, and above them all, artistic affairs.

For if we can imagine that through Gustavo Dudamel, the city of Bogotá can share with Los Angeles an arts audience model that in outreach and demographic variety different than anything usually seen aimed at Spanish-speaking audiences, there is every likelihood that its benefits can also apply across different musical genres and across multidisciplinary lines.

An additional highlight for music lovers was the announcement of the Second International Music Festival of Bogotá. It will be called Bogotá es Mozart and will consist of 63 concerts of music all by Mozart spread over the first four days of April, 2015.

Teatro’s first International Music Festival of Bogotá in 2013 was called Bogotá es Beethoven and consisted of 55 concerts of music by Beethoven. I attended 25. The audiences, consisting of families with kids, teenagers dating, young power couples, singles and classical music’s usual crowds sold the concerts 90% out. They were the best audiences I was ever in, and the musicians concurred.