Bravo! The Free-Spirited, Freewheeling Gustavo Dudamel Arrives at the New York Philharmonic
Vogue
September 8, 2026
Not long after it started, Jamie Bernstein, daughter of the iconic composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, encountered a clip of Dudamel conducting YOLA’s rendition of the mambo from West Side Story. “Some of them looked like they couldn’t have been more than 14,” she recalls of the musicians, “and they were just playing the daylights out of it. I thought, Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this before. And then I thought, Oh, it’s the same vibe as my dad.” She went to Venezuela to meet Dudamel, and the two have been friends ever since. Years ago she surprised him with one of her father’s vests. “He just put it right on,” she remembers.