You may have heard somewhere that Gustavo Dudamel takes over as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic next week. There have been a couple small news items on the subject. It seems like only yesterday that he and Hilary were performing Mozart for The Pope’s 80th birthday. They grow up so fast, don’t they?
Much as it kills me softly to give the man more press, there was an interesting post over at Sequenza21 earlier this week about how Gustavo Dudamel is talked about in LA Philharmonic press releases. Here is the release excerpt from Sequenza21:
On September 24, 2009, the LA Phil launched a microsite celebrating the arrival of incoming Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. Introducing audiences worldwide to Gustavo in new and engaging ways, the comprehensive microsite, located at http://www.laphil.com/gustavo, features videos such as Gustavo‘s first rehearsal with the YOLA Expo Center Youth Orchestra, the LA Phil’s video tribute “Welcome Gustavo,” and the press conferences unveiling Gustavo‘s inaugural season and appointment as 11th Music Director of the LA Phil. Visitors can also take a multimedia journey through Gustavo‘s life with tiling photographs, video and biographical text. The latest Gustavo-related news and newly recorded audio and video content will be added to the microsite as Gustavo‘s exciting inaugural season progresses.
Herbert’ or ‘Welcome Antal’ back in the day, the crowds would never
have left.”
A visit to said comprehensive microsite reveals that Gustavo Dudamel is referred to as “Gustavo” just about everywhere, an odd choice, I think, considering everyone I know has called him “Dudamel” since first hearing his name. This includes everyone from “industry insiders” (you can imagine how much I hate that phrase) to my college friends who read The Economist profile last year and called to ask if I’d “heard of this Dudamel guy.” Did Obama’s people try and switch us over to “Barack” after the election? Absolutely not. I feel like they barely tried to switch us over to “President Obama.” Who wants to say “Gustavo” or “Barack” when you can bust out “Dudamel” or “Obama”? DUDamel. oBAMa. Insert coolness-indicating head-bopping motion of your choice when you say either.
From the microsite:
It’s challenging to find a full bio on the LA Phil website or the Gustavo (” “) microsite, but in the biographical items on the microsite, The Dude is referred to by his first AND last name, which seems like a further odd choice if the press releases and the rest of the site are telling us we’re on a first-name basis with him:
Gustavo Dudamel‘s career was launched in El Sistema, the youth orchestra system widely praised for its social contributions to young people in Venezuela. El Sistema
encompasses a music and social program for over 250,000 young
Venezuelans who begin their musical instruction at three years of age.
The program celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2005.
Following international attention garnered by triumphing in the
inaugural Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in May 2004, Gustavo
Dudamel made his U.S. debut leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the
Hollywood Bowl in September 2005 in performances of Silvestre
Revueltas’ La noche de los mayas and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.
You’re showing us childhood photos and we can’t call him “Gustavo” here?
I never did his full bio on the LA Phil’s website, so I went to his official website and found it there. Far from the casual LA Phil press release, here we have a bio in which Dudamel, Where’s My Car is referred to again by his first and last name together (as formal as you get) or by his last name alone:
Following guest appearances with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin
Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel‘s inaugural 2009-10 season as Los Angeles
Philharmonic Music Director begins on October 3 with ¡Bienvenido
Gustavo! This free, day-long musical celebration at the Hollywood Bowl
for the Los Angeles community culminates with Dudamel leading the Los
Angeles Philharmonic in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. On October 8, 2009,
Dudamel leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the inaugural gala at
Walt Disney Concert Hall, featuring the world premiere of John Adams’s
City Noir and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.
Dude, what’s your name?
Like the other fifteen classical music publicists in the country, I spent many, many hours in August (and some in September…and maybe a few yesterday) updating my artists’ bios. Sondra Radvanovsky’s previous bio, for example, had her as “Sondra” everywhere except the first paragraph, and that made me extremely uncomfortable. Why should it, though, when I’ve been telling my colleagues in the press that she’s and old-world diva in terms of repertoire, while being a completely down-to-earth woman-of-2009? No old-world diva would go by “Sondra” in a bio, but would a woman-of-2009 go by “Ms. Radvanovsky” (my least favorite option) or “Radvanovsky” (what I always use)? One thing I’ve noticed is that female artists’ bios often use “Ms. Last Name” while male artists’ bios rarely say “Mr. Last Name”; the male version just says “Last Name.” But again, if Hilary is recording personal messages to her fans in her hotel room from her MacBook Pro and uploading them to YouTube, wouldn’t using “Hilary” in her bio be more in line with her image and attitude toward accessibility? Or is there a time and an outlet for all degrees of formality in artist materials, just as there is in our everyday lives?
Ah, yes …the August bio updating, which for me did ultimately extend into September. One wants to lock oneself in a padded room.
Clearly the “Gustavo” issue was a decision – and perhaps even by Gustavo. But I do remember the Cincinnati Symphony’s Bravo Paavo campaign.
And the San Francisco Symphony’s simple….BLOMSTEDT campaign, using only the last name. Not to mention the SFS/MTT campaign, which is much easier to say and write than the fully spelled out version.
Bio updating: the pianist Stephen Kovacevich’s bio has a list of “recent and upcoming” appearance locations that includes San Francisco. I made inquiries about this and he has no upcoming Bay Area appearances. His most recent appearance was in 1999.
Back to the main point. It’s infantalizing to call Dudamel by his first name all the time, and half the reason it’s happening is that is under 30 and looks very young.
Away from the main point: S. Rad. (long name!) was absolutely awesome in Trovatore.
BLOMSTEDT has a nice but to-the-point heft to it. Especially in all-caps, it gives you a sense of “need we say more?” Though Tilson Thomas is long print-wise, it’s a quick roll off the tongue; and seriously, nobody’s going to ever do a “Michael” campaign, right?
“Gustavo” is a perfectly nice first name, but weakens the whole thing. It’s already bad that there’s enough hyperbole floating around these blurbs; overlaying the whole thing with a “he’s your pal” first-name thing is weak. Google “Gustavo” and while you’ll get a top reference to Dudamel, the rest of the page is shared by Gustavo Santaolalla (yay!), Gustavo Kuerten, Gustavo Cosmetics, etc. Google “Dudamel” and you’ll have to go many pages in before you get anything that *isn’t* about ol’ Gus.
To be uber cool how about instead of
“Dudamel, Where’s My Car” we can just call him “Mr. Where’s My Car”?