A moment of joy

And proof that the arts make a difference

I’ve been reading the bestselling, groundbreaking book Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us (yes, I’m a little late to this party, but it’s been worth the wait!).

If you’ve already read this book, you know it makes an incredible case for including art and creativity in everything we do, and how integrating it into our lives can make a huge difference.

I was especially struck by the story of famed conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who had a life-changing moment at 26, when he conducted Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in London in a performance of “Mambo” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.

Photo by Samuel Sianipar on Unsplash

The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra isn’t just any orchestra. It’s made up of kids who learned to play instruments thanks to a program called El Sistema, which aims to teach all sorts of early childhood development skills through the arts, specifically through instrumental music and playing in an orchestra. Dudamel himself was part of the El Sistema program as a child, and started to learn to play violin at age 4.

El Sistema isn’t trying to turn out professional musicians. Its goal is to teach kids cognitive, social, and emotional skills through music so they can live better lives.

This is the passage that struck me:

Gustavo Dudamel can pinpoint the precise moment when his life changed. It came in 2007 when he was not yet the famous and highly decorated music and artistic director for the Los Angeles Philharmonic that he is today. Dudamel was a twenty-six-year-old leading Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. And he was doing so in front of a packed theater of classical-music lovers in London.

[…]

Dudamel led the players through a tour-de-force performance that was capped by not one but three encores, including Leonard Bernstein’s “Mambo” from his West Side Story score. The musicians, solid in their craft, erupted in a boisterous interpretation of Bernstein’s song. The drums and horns laid out a mambo beat; the string section stood and danced as they played. Soon, the audience was out of their seats, too, enrapt and smiling, laughing and clapping along. Dudamel led his colleagues, his friends, with an infectious joy, and when the final note played, the applause was deafening. “It was a historic moment,” he said in a 2021 BBC interview recalling that night. “For me as a conductor, it was the moment where the rocket went up.”

Magsamen, Susan; Ross, Ivy. Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us (pp. 171-172). (Function). Kindle Edition.

There was no way I could read about that and not go looking for this performance online, hoping there was a recording somewhere. And sure enough, there is. What the authors neglected to mention is that this performance was at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms—just a few minor, insignificant details <insert eyeroll here>.

This video includes an interview with Dudamel about the performance and El Sistema, which includes the quote above, and also talks about the evolution of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. It’s worth watching.

All that said, and as fabulous as that performance is, I found another in the course of my search that I think is even better. As the saying goes, this one is turned up to 11 (maybe even turned up to 13!).

I’ll let you see why for yourself.

It’s no surprise to me at all that folks in the comments say they regularly visit these videos for a quick pick-me-up. Do you think you’ll do the same? Are there other pieces of music that serve this purpose for you? I’d love to hear your reactions and your favorites in a comment!