The White Hands Choir (El Coro de Manos Blancas) began rehearsals earlier this month in Venezuela for the upcoming 2024 tour and European premiere of the groundbreaking production of Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio. They will return to LA in May 2024 to begin rehearsals and performances for the LA performance and European tour.

With Trenton Arts at Princeton, founder Lou Chen has tapped into a rhythm that unites Trenton and Princeton in harmony. When he launched the Trenton Youth Orchestra in partnership with Trenton Central High School while still a student at Princeton University in spring 2017, cultivating a small group of Trenton violinists and Princeton volunteers who would set the stage for a new alliance, Chen sounded the first beat in a now-five-year symphony of artistic synergy.

For over ten years, the Dudamel Foundation has been committed to transforming the world through art, culture, and music. In 2022, we marked the 10-year milestone with the world premiere of Fidelio and the first Encuentros festival in the United States in Los Angeles. Thank you to all the amazing students, teachers, artists, partners, and donors who have made these past years such a memorable and joyful experience.

Trenton Arts at Princeton has announced the 2023-24 Fellows. Congratulations to Charlotte Defriez, the 2023-2024 Fellow supported by the Dudamel Foundation. Charlotte will serve as the student leader for Trenton Youth Orchestra, working alongside TYO director Lou Chen and faculty fellow Anna Lim. photo: trentonarts.princeton.edu

World-renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel grew up in Venezuela and it was thanks to a program to help children progress that he became a superstar in the world of classical music. Thanks to a scholarship from his native Venezuela, conductor Gustavo Dudamel was able to work his way up to becoming a superstar in the world of classical music. Now he passes on his energy and enthusiasm to a new generation.

The acclaimed collaboration between the LA Phil, Deaf West Theatre, and El Sistema’s Coro de Manos Blancas in Beethoven’s Fidelio, created for both Deaf and hearing audiences will return to LA in 2024.

View the Encuentros 2022 journey. In honor of the Hollywood Bowl’s first 100 seasons, the LA Phil and Dudamel Foundation partnered up to bring over 100 top-tier young musicians from around the world to work side-by-side in the Encuentros Orchestra, exploring cultural unity and celebrating harmony, equality, dignity, beauty, and respect through music.

“I tell them, look, when you are walking on the street,” he explains, “you are normal people like everybody else. But you cannot imagine the power you have in your hands when you take an instrument and you play. You can transform the feeling of that person. People cry. People laugh. You are magicians.”

Under the leadership of Gustavo Dudamel and María Valverde, the Dudamel Foundation and the LA Phil will co-present LA Encuentros 2022, their first Encuentros (Encounters) in the United States, July 19–August 6, 2022.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic and Deaf West Theater are working on an innovative production conceived for both hearing and deaf operagoers.

“On stage, the audience witnesses a world with a mix of hearing and deaf people. ‘It’s a way of educating us to in being open to worlds we’re not used to. The collaboration of everyone leads to understanding the language of the soul in an opera,’ says Maria Valverde, co-chair of the Dudamel Foundation.”

The White Hands Choir (Coro de Manos Blancas) is a musical ensemble where young people come together to form a chorus divided into two sections — Vocal and Venezuelan Sign Language (LSV) — which merge to give rise to a new proposal for musical expression.

Through the support of the Dudamel Foundation, El Sistema’s White Hands Choir (Coro de Manos Blancas) is coming to Los Angeles, CA in April 2022 to join Gustavo, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the acclaimed Tony Award®-winning Deaf West Theatre in a deeply emotional, innovative new semi-staged production of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, created for both Deaf and hearing audiences.

Under the leadership of Gustavo Dudamel and María Valverde, the Dudamel Foundation presented its first European Encuentros in Spain in June 2021. Students from ten countries across the Americas joined students from Spain and Portugal to explore cultural unity and celebrate harmony, equality, dignity, beauty, and respect through music.

These life-changing experiences, Encuentros, challenge, inspire, and teach a new generation of young leaders to build a better world.

‘The most important thing is to create spaces so that these young people who come from such diverse realities can meet and enrich themselves,’ says [Gustavo Dudamel] in his dressing room, minutes before the concert. ‘That is what I experienced as a child. After a week and a half, they are absolutely musically transformed. And how? Through the challenge.’

“A dare: bring together 59 young people from 12 countries for 12 days in the midst of a pandemic to tackle a high-profile musical challenge. We accompany the Venezuelan teacher and his clan during an intense human and sound journey.” –by Ana Alfageme for El País

Under the leadership of co-chairs Gustavo Dudamel and María Valverde, the Dudamel Foundation presented its first European Encuentros in Spain in June 2021 in partnership with Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union, and Cooperation and Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB). A champion of the belief in music's power to unite and inspire, Gustavo created the idea of Encuentros (English: “encounters”) in 2018 through his Foundation as a way to explore cultural unity and celebrate harmony, equality, dignity, beauty, and respect through music. Through this vision, Encuentros inspires and teaches a new generation of young leaders to build a better world.

“Culture must be part of the post-pandemic recovery. As stated by Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, ‘the upcoming recovery will determine who we will be in the years to come. Culture cannot be forgotten in national plans, because there will be no economic recovery without culture.’ Indeed, art and culture cannot be forgotten in this stage of recovery.” –Gustavo Dudamel

On April 10, 2021, Symphony: a journey into the heart of music will open as a permanent exhibition at “la Caixa” Foundation’s cultural centre, CaixaForum Barcelona.

The Dudamel Foundation presents its first European Encuentros in Spain in June 2021 in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Secretary for International Cooperation of Spain. Students from the Americas — México, the United States, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Perú, and Nicaragua — and Spain will work together side-by-side in the Orquesta del Encuentro con Dudamel.