Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic are always keeping an eye out for today’s rising young conductors, tomorrow’s music directors. Since 2009, the orchestra’s Dudamel Fellowship Program has offered a step up to the podium, and this week, the LA Phil announced the next class of conductors joining the program.
The four fellows for the 2021–2022 season are François López-Ferrer, Chloé van Soeterstède, Camilo Téllez, and Enlius Montes Olivar. Each young conductor will work alongside Dudamel and the LA Phil for part of the year, leading their own programs, covering others’, and contributing to the orchestra’s community outreach.
Some of the new cohort are well versed as assistant conductors at American orchestras. López-Ferrer is the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s associate conductor, and Téllez serves in that same position with the Frost Symphony Orchestra (at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music).
Like in years past, this season’s class of Dudamel Fellows hails from around the world. Van Soeterstède is a native of France, and she’s making a handful of European debuts in 2021–2022. Montes Olivar trained in Venezuela’s El Sistema program and is a returning fellow (he was part of the 2019–2020 cohort and made his Hollywood Bowl debut this summer too).
The young conductors’ engagements with the LA Phil begin in 2022, with the orchestra’s Symphonies for Youth and Symphonies for Schools series. (The LA Phil had to cancel the 2021 programs in the Youth series earlier this month, following a stricter set of COVID-19 health guidelines.)
And more conducting news from the orchestra: The LA Phil is keeping Paolo Bortolameolli on as associate conductor through summer 2022. (He was assistant conductor for the 2017–2018 season and moved up to associate in 2019). Bortolameolli is a former Dudamel Fellow himself (2016–2017) and proof that the program can lead to bigger things.
