LA takes baton as flagship for youth orchestras

[November 14, 2011]  LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Gustavo Dudamel stands off to the side of a teen orchestra as they laboriously rehearse Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5.

At the end, he hops on to the conductor's podium and demonstrates that the difference between playing music and performing it is passion.

"Be wild, like the pop music," says the 30-year-old music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Considered the rock star of the classical realm, Dudamel is in a program based on one in his native Venezuela, dubbed El Sistema -- the System -- that discovered his own musical talent.

Los Angeles has emerged as the flagship of El Sistema U.S.A with 500 children. Next year the Philharmonic will start training instructors in the Sistema method, which provides intensive musical training in way that enhances children's self-esteem.

[Associated Press; By CHRISTINA HOAG]

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