Los Angeles Philharmonic Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel will deliver the keynote address at USC\u2019s 2026 commencement ceremony.<\/p>\n
Dudamel, 45, has led the Los Angeles Philharmonic as music director since 2009, and is well known for his conducting \u2014 often from memory, without a score. He also serves as music director of the Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, he began conducting at age 12 and has been a strong supporter of children\u2019s musical development. Inspired by his own music education program in Venezuela, he co-founded the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, which brings free music education to disadvantaged communities, in 2007. <\/p>\n
Dudamel has also joined different types of performance across the arts \u2014 he previously conducted the opening and closing credits of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and performed at the Super Bowl with Coldplay and Beyonc\u00e9 in 2016. Now in his last season with the LA Philharmonic, he will soon transition to become the music & artistic director of the New York Philharmonic later this year. <\/p>\n
In a press release announcing the speaker on Monday, USC spokesperson Leigh Hopper said the university expects graduates to hear about the necessity and power of community, joy and art at commencement.<\/p>\n
\u201cGustavo Dudamel has transformed how this city experiences music,\u201d USC President Beong-Soo Kim said in the release. \u201cHe is living proof that joy and excellence are transformative qualities, and that is exactly the message we want to convey as we send our graduates into the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
USC\u2019s 143rd commencement is scheduled for May 14 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Philharmonic Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel will deliver the keynote address at USC\u2019s 2026 commencement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7974,38954,80507,10958,8600,21711,8606,48,52,51,38596,53186,47,50,49,49533,47929,109241],"class_list":{"0":"post-243639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-classical-music","9":"tag-commencement","10":"tag-conductor","11":"tag-dudamel","12":"tag-graduation","13":"tag-gustavo-dudamel","14":"tag-keynote-speaker","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-la-headlines","17":"tag-la-news","18":"tag-la-phil","19":"tag-la-philharmonic","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","22":"tag-los-angeles-news","23":"tag-new-york-philharmonic","24":"tag-speaker","25":"tag-usc-commencement"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}