Venezuela churns out music maestros despite crisis
bogota — Even in the throes of crisis, Venezuela keeps churning out one export prized the world over: classical music maestros.
The latest addition to the country’s growing cadre of top-flight musical talent is Rafael Payare, who was named musical director of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra this week.
Payare, 37, has conducted at the world’s most prestigious concert halls and currently presides over the Ulster Orchestra in Northern Ireland. But he said his appointment to the helm of the San Diego Symphony was a huge surprise, coming just a month after he made his guest-conducting debut with the century-old ensemble.
“We only spent a week together but things immediately clicked and I could tell this is an orchestra that wants to expand both artistically and inside the community,” Payare said in a phone interview from his home in Berlin.
He credits his selection in part to the pioneering path laid by another curly haired charismatic Venezuelan, Gustavo Dudamel, who revolutionized the normally stiff and European-centered world of classical music when in 2007 he was named musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the age of 28. “Gustavo with his marvelous artistry did something that broke a barrier not just for Venezuelans but for all young conductors,” said Payare. The two have been close friends since childhood, when they studied conducting together, and Payare for years played the French horn under Dudamel’s direction in the globe-trotting Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.
That same orchestra has given rise to a slew of under-40 Venezuelan conductors who have recently found success abroad.
They include Diego Matheuz, who enjoyed a long run as principal conductor of La Fenice opera house in Venice; Christian Vasquez, who leads orchestras in Norway and Holland; and Domingo Hindoyan, who last month made his debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.—AP