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Gustavo Dudamel's Final Season: LA Phil Announces 2025-26 Concerts

March 7, 2025, 5:38 PM · A heavy dose of nostalgia was in the air as the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced its 2025-26 offerings - the final season in LA for Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, LA's international superstar conductor and beloved local celebrity.

"We are celebrating - and mourning, to a degree - the final season of our Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel," said President and CEO Kim Noltemy on Thursday at an event at Walt Disney Concert Hall to announce the season, which has been dubbed "Gracias Gustavo."

Dudamel came to LA 17 years ago as a young conducting phenom from Venezuela, and he has grown into the city's identity while also gaining respect worldwide for his artistry. He even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

His departure is just one of a great many transitions occurring right now for the LA Phil, starting with the arrival of Noltemy just last July. With no one yet named to replace Dudamel, she and the LA Phil board, led by new President Jason Subotky, will be tasked with finding his replacement. There are also considerable vacancies within the orchestra's leadership: for example, auditions start at the end of this month for a new concertmaster, with departure at the end of the season of three of the orchestra's four concertmasters: Martin Chalifour, Nathan Cole and Akiko Tarumoto.

But back to next year's season - before he leaves to take his new post as Music and Artistic Director of the New York Philharmonic in the 2026/27 season, Dudamel will lead the LA Phil in a season that takes its beats from his successful tenure with the orchestra: a love for Mahler, quirky locally-themed and Pan-American commission projects, big opera productions, forays into pop culture (did you know the LA Phil is playing at Coachella next month?), his commitment to education and underserved youth and more.

The season, called "Gracias Gustavo," includes 14 programs conducted by Dudamel. A few highlights:

• Mahler's Second Symphony, "The Resurrection," with the LA Master Chorale
• A two-week tour of Asia in October
• Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" - the first time Dudamel has conducted the work
• A repeat performance of Gabriela Ortiz's "Revolution diamantina," for which the orchestra recently won a Grammy
• An LA Phil commission project led by Dudamel and Ortiz, inspired by the local mural The Great Wall of Los Angeles by Judy Baca, featuring the work of six local composers as well as original film elements
• A staging of Wagner's Die Walkure, with set design by architect Frank Gehry, architect who designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. (This follows a 2024 production of Das Rheingold, along the same lines. Will Dudamel come back and finish the Ring cycle in LA? He indicated that he would be open to doing so...)
• Yo-Yo Ma premieres a cello concerto by Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón.
• A night of concertos, featuring musicians of the LA Phil as soloists

When it comes to violinists and string players, the season will feature artists familiar to LA Phil audiences: Itzhak Perlman, Renaud Capucon, Pekka Kuusisto, Clara-Jumi Kang, Maria Dueñas, Lisa Batiashvili and Joshua Bell. Also cellists Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Alisa Weilerstein and Yo-Yo Ma.

See the complete season schedule here.

Dudamel also will continue working next season with Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), kicking off the season with a YOLA Community Celebration. Dudamel helped to create YOLA even before he conducted his first concert as the official Music Director of the LA Phil, and it is obvious that YOLA is one of the greatest legacies Dudamel will leave to the city of Los Angeles. The program provides underserved youth with free instruments, intensive music instruction, and opportunities to perform on stages in their communities and around the world. It started in 2007 with 80 students and has grown today to 1,700 students ages 5-18 across four locations in the city. It even has its own building, the Beckmen YOLA Center, which opened in 2023.

Also on Thursday, the LA Phil announced four new "Dudamel Fellows" who will participate in the 16th and final class of the Dudamel Fellowship Program in 2025/26. As Board President Subotky announced them he noted that the past roster "is really a Who's Who of conductors today." The new fellows are Kinga Glowacka of Poland, Ana María Patiño-Osorio of Colombia, José Ángel Salazar of Venezuela and Miguel Sepúlveda of Portugal. Past participants have included Elim Chan, Anna Handler, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Rafael Papare, David Afkham, Jonathon Heyward, Gemma New, Marta Gardolinska and Tianyi Lu.

As if to illustrate this era of transition, the announcement ceremony closed with a violin duet that featured one of the longest-standing violinists in the LA Phil with a young player associated with YOLA. LA Phil violinist Dale Breidenthal, who will retire after this season after more than 40 years with the orchestra, performed with young violinist Sergio Paez, who studied with Breidenthal and also participated in the the YOLA program. Paez is now a project coordinator for YOLA's College Prep Program.

Here's a fun little trailer about the season (with nice music - but it is by a German mix artist named Clemens Ruh, not the LA Phil I'm afraid!):

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