Hello, welcome to Smart Lists, I am Jason Bateman, one of the less smart hosts, even less smart is Will Arnett and truly dumb as Sean Hayes we each have invited. Well, one of us invites a guest per week. The other two don't know who that person is. Some of it's going to be funny. Hopefully you won't cry and hopefully you learn a little something. So let's get started.

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Hey, guys. What's going on? Great to see you guys. It's great to see you, too. Did you work out this morning? You look like you've shed a little water weight.

Okay, you know what? Actually, I have. And yesterday, Sean.

Yeah, Jason, I was hanging out and he made a comment that somehow I look like I'm holding water and do I look like I'm holding water?

Be honest. No.

Well, you look great. You're the father of four, five, six, three, seven kids, three and a half kids.

And we're who owns the other half. I was just say this the other day. You said something.

I forget what what show was but one of our shows, you said you've got like 17. Have you ever noticed any time people make up a number that they're trying to say, like, you got 17 kids, you people always say 17? Yeah. Have you ever noticed that? Yes. What's and and I notice it because Seventeen's actually my lucky number of knows this for thinking a 17 this guy now you know one which is true.

Will has custom made golf balls to put the number 17 on his golf ball by seven because he's a Wendell Clarke fan, greatest hockey player. When this guy remember low score is when you're playing golf, you want to not swing, you know, so many times low score wins. He looks down at the ball before every swing and he's looking at a seventeen. That's my number. This is why this way you're terrible golfer. Put a one down.

I was I grew up and I love a love one. But of course, Shanae, our friend Shanny is also, you know, one of the all time greats. I don't because I feel like Shanae sometimes feels like, wow, you really love Wendle and there's not enough.

What was Shannahan?

So when he was in the Hall of Fame, what was his number, though? She was fourteen.

Oh, that's so that's a better score than seventeen. Well, maybe three strokes on the next hole anyway.

Thank you. Thank you for. I guess this all comes back to. Thank you. I do.

I did work out this morning guys. Here's here's what I love about our little show.

And in addition to bringing on friends and getting to know something about them that we don't already know, we get to bring on people we've always wanted to meet. Yeah.

And for some reason they say yes. And I don't know why are you segueing into the intro right now?

Yeah, this is this is this is one of the all time great ways. Thank you. Yeah. It was subtle and it started with guys. Yeah. But I've always wanted to meet this guy.

He was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and he got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame just last year for his advocacy of the arts. He is now this is going to give it away, the artistic director of the L.A. Philharmonic.

And besides receiving a billion award for being the world's most awesome conductor, he conducted get this.

This is when I kind of perked up. He conducted the score for Star Wars, The Force Awakens. And he also conducted the upcoming Steven Spielberg adaptation of West Side Story. Happens to be my favorite musical. And there's a million other things we're going to talk about. Please welcome the unbelievable Gustavo Dudamel.

Hello. I am absolutely floored. Hello. I was having such a fun here listening to you.

My God. Oh, my God. You know, Sean, I have to say so. Gustavo, I hesitate even calling you by your first name.

I feel like I've only only met some respect. Mr. Dudamel shot because Sean and I share a deep, deep love for classical music. And I have been fantasizing like, God, if I if I could somehow book Gustavo Dudamel, it would blow Sean's mind.

I can't believe you have to know that. He's such a pleasure to be with you. So much for joining us. My name, Jew Gustavo.

Like, which one of your parents are like. I know Gustavo. He's because poit you know Colusa well for Baker, you know Spanish Boyte and OK. And he's very famous in there in the Spanish you know, B territory and all of that. So it wasn't a family name or anything. No. I'm the first Gustavo you know. Gustavo the first.

What do they call you for. Short to anybody. Call you Gus. Oh but they don't know. They call me in different ways but they when they are angry they call me. So I of course, you know, but generally my little one chiquito is exactly my my my little one there, my, my grandmother and my mother, they call me like that. So but I'm, I'm Gustavo Gosse.

Some people call me cause you wait, you have brothers and sisters, they get angry and call you that.

Well I have a sister that is the same age of my son, you know, so she's like my daughter. Wow. So yes, I was an only child for four thirty years. Oh, wow. And I have a beautiful daughter. Wow. Oh, that's so great.

And do you live here in Los Angeles? You must. I live in Los Angeles. Yes, you know, before the covid think, yeah, I was travelling, you know, nonstop around the world, even like since I married four years ago, around four years ago, I stopped traveling so much.

But but I'm traveling all the time. But I. I can call Los Angeles home, you know. Oh, that sounds so right now.

You would be doing the portion of the season at the Hollywood Bowl. Yes. But obviously that is is not happening. So so have you been I guess you can't really be traveling either.

So you take you just some home time and hanging out with your your wife and kid.

Yes. Yes. You know, all of these complexities I see as opportunities for me, you know, being traveling by being working in a very speed in a very fast speed.

You know, I always say that we were leaving before the quarantine up pretty small tempo. That is very fast, you know, and now we go to one and done all that so we can say he's walking today. Exactly.

I think Sharon let him finish. Sorry. And and and I think for the next chapter, you know, after all of these past, I believe I want to leave, you know, and Allegro Caldmore, you know, I don't want to get back to, to the same amount of, you know, things, you know, craziness. Yes.

Because you always go, go, go, go. I can't imagine with your energy and always, you know, doing everything it seems that this quarantine, this down time I just imagine you would go crazy. Like how do you feel.

Oh no. Well I'm crazy because I cannot move in front of the orchestra, you know, that, you know, I need that exercise.

But I think, you know, the work of a conductor is a lot about reflection. You know, the interpretation, what you want to make from the notes that you are showing to the orchestra in a way, you know, with with your movements and all of that in and it have been a great time for me to go deeply in in a lot of things that I was doing and all the things that I will do. But the things that I was doing, I think that it have been the process for me to go to to other levels of the things that I do generally.

And, you know, it comes from simplicity. You know, I'm rereading a lot of books and reading your books. I have learned about myself a lot of things. I can cook really well. I can. I can. I mean, you know, I can.

I've been reading a lot to actually recently in all seriousness. And I was reading there are a lot of parallels between wartime and what we're going through right now. And I was reading about a book about not necessarily about the World War two, but about how people lived in Europe during that time. And it wasn't as much of focus on the war itself, but about the people who were living there on either side and how similar it is.

Of course, it's not there's not the same, but sort of the mentality that was going on in that sort of the feelings that people were feeling were very, very hopelessness. Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking about what you said. Gustav is great that you said that, like a lot of reflection in as a conductor, it's a lot about reflection. And in this time, it is forced a lot of us to reflect on how we live our lives and what is important to us.

I've been doing the same thing and ended up speaking World War to remind you of a great Churchill quote that I've been thinking a lot about in this time, which is never let a good crisis go to waste. And that's how that's been. My I love that my mindset lately has been.

Yeah, I just I got to in this time use this what can I take out of it.

And so you thought, well, let's start with the tanne. Right. So let's try to get my skin looking as healthy as possible.

You know, Jason, it's called the quarantine, OK, of it seems like even since last week that maybe did you fall asleep inside the bed?

What happened was the nozzle broke. I mean, the sun just follows you. The nozzle broken the canister and it all came out of what you call the sun around the planet.

Right. Because that's not a color you can get just during day hours.

You know, I know. I built I had them build me a special plane that's a convertible convertible jet.

So, Gustavo, you know, a lot of people think that. I remember being a kid, like thinking like watching a conductor is going, well, how hard could it be? They just waved their arms around and, you know, like the orchestra knows the notes to play and where to come in. But there's obviously a billion things to, you know, to it that that that's ridiculous.

So explain how you shape a piece as the leader of the band, you know, because by the way, down your arms.

Ever get tired from holding him up that long? Because the shoulders the shoulders are fantastic, because I did a semiconducting in college and I thought that was going to be what I was going to do with my life.

But all my gestures and our movements are so gigantic. People just look like I was a crazy person. They looked at me like I was insane.

And now I am. Yes. Yes, of course. He's more than the movements for sure. Right. You know, in.

But don't you see movies where people play conductors and they're just kind of like they're just really bad at it?

Yeah, but but, you know, I think every movement has to reflect, you know, the music. You'd have to shape the music that you are conducting and reshape different things. You shape the volume, the tempo, how fast, how slow, these kind of different things. But but I believe our our work is a lot of us were talking reflexion, you know, a lot of about a philosophical point of view, of an interpretation. Imagine trying to interpret Beethoven's symphony that have been playing, you know, for the last two hundred years, you know, in different kind of styles, you know, and then you arrive to an orchestra that have played a thousand of times also and with the great conductors.

And then you arrive with a new idea how to convince them of that idea. That makes sense. You know, musically, it makes sense artistically. And it's also about psychology. I think the most beautiful process is the rehearsal process. When you are preparing something, if you have the chance to go to a rehearsal, because people see, you know, the performance and but the process is really interesting with hundred people in front of you and you are arriving at ten o'clock in the morning and then you have 100 people there, you know, with different realities, you know.

Yeah, yeah. And then you want you want to inspire them. You want to to convince them that there are other thousand ways to interpret that music that they have play a lot of times before. So it's a beautiful process. You is an impossible transformation. Sometimes you cannot see and you have to play along with the energy of the people. You know, from the podium where you are. I can see all the faces, you know, and you can see, you know, this guy have a problem.

This lady, you know, is ultra happy. This one is. And you have to put all of that energy in one box, you know, and take that and put more even more. They're so right.

It's a lot about psychology, philosophy.

And that is the thing.

You know, it's not only to it's fun. You know, I think with the time and sorry that I speak too much, you know.

Oh, my God. OK, listen to you. All right.

But I think I was very exuberant in the way I was conducting a for when I was I don't remember season until now. You see an evolution in the way of because maybe some movements I don't need right now to do as before to have the same energy, but is is part of an evolution. And yes, my arms, I have to say, are trained to to be moving all the time. But yes. Yeah.

So for a listener who has never been to see an orchestra play but has been to many different rock concerts. So if you go to a rock show and you hope that band plays the song that you know that you love and they start playing it, but then they do it in a way that's completely different than what you're used to on the record or on the radio. Now, if you go to see you conduct, you know, the film or whatever and let's say Beethoven's fourth piano concertos with my favorites.

So if you started conducting that and you started playing that at a tempo that is completely different than what I'm used to hearing, how much can you change what is on the sheet, what is acceptable, what is appropriate? What did Beethoven assume future conductors were going to be?

Very, very interesting question. Really. It cannot be a Capriccio. You cannot be an improvisation. You know, in an especially if you are in front of musicians that they have their knowledge about what they are doing. You know, you cannot get and be crazy. They're in front of them and improvise and know everything, have to be very well-prepared, although I have to say that.

Since Beethoven premiere, he's concertos, let's talk about the Eroica symphony, for example, through the Eroica Symphony that is one of his main masterpieces and is that one that he wrote for Napoleon and then he changed, you know, because he got angry with Napoleon, because the idols didn't take his hand on God. And then he premier that, you know, with few musicians in a very small room, it was only one days. I think it was only one cello.

Imagine we played the Eroica now with a double bassist, then cellos. We do we double the winds. You know, I think the music they mention where you can play with some things, but not you cannot change for sure. You know, you can change only the things that are flexible in the discourse.

I don't know how to say that in the in the in the creation of of the composer, but it's like tempo or the way you attack those notes or everything.

It can be everything, but everything is in the music, I have to say. But in Beethoven, for example, he writes A for me is very special because he was that, you know, he was not allowed to listen to his music, you know, at the end of his life.

It was that after the Eighth Symphony, did it go away completely or. Exactly. Exactly.

He was losing. He was losing already. When he wrote the Fifth, he was you know, he was listening really bad.

You know, that one started it. Exactly.

And then when he wrote it, when you arrive to the nine, are you when you are sorry, it's shone insulted me. That's OK. No, I did have speed. I'm getting I'm getting used to my my question for sorry sorry to cut you off Gustavo but but just with Beethoven, did you believe the chemistry between Bonnie Hunt and Charles Grodin.

Because I didn't.

Because I know. No. Well we're talking about the music here, not the Beethoven the movie, not the dog film. We got to go back. I'm back on track. I'm not the 1992. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about the composer.

You got embarrassed to that point, Gustavo. You know, I studied piano at five years old. I started taking lessons and studying music and I started writing music. I started conducting in college and I thought I was going to do all that stuff. But the anxiety to your point of having to hit those notes exactly as they're written, but you cannot improvise.

You know, the notes are the notes. And so I did all these competitions and and the pressure and the stress and the anxiety of having to do that.

I was like, this isn't fun. Like, it's not fun to hit the wrong notes because you hit one wrong note. Everybody can tell. But in comedy or like stand up. Yeah, if it's not going great, you can kind of, you know, massage it to your and it's kind of incumbent upon you.

One of the great elements of comedy certainly is the element of surprise.

Yeah.

So but so sort of true that when you're about to embark on a new project with a piece that everybody is very familiar with any one of these culture, and you're about what are the discussions that you have with everybody and with your team?

What are the kind of conceptual conversations that you have that's going to say, you know, on this particular when we embark on this, we're going to do this?

What is how do we surprise them? Yeah. Yeah. What is the as we would say in America was the blocking and tackling on this? What is the actual X's and O's. Yeah.

And how far can you go with this is this is a kind of a paradox, because when you go to them to the stage, let's say for the first rehearsal, you know, you have been preparing your interpretation with the score. You have the party tour, you read.

Maybe you listen to two old recordings. I try to do that sometimes, you know, and then I stop for a year and then I go back and I check the things that I want to. But then when you arrive, this is the thing of conducting. When you arrive to the stage and the orchestra plays perfectly what you do, you know what you can say. You know, there is the point where I'd start the recreation of all of what have been happening.

You know, with this music in, there is a connection. You know, there is I have to say, Garcia Lorca, the the Spanish poet, he called twenty leprechaun. You know, that some people have you know, people can call Catie's Matalan or all of us to connect, you know, and to convince in a good way. And for me, that is the most important thing. When I explain something, you need to have a reason for them.

If not doesn't work, you know, in the orchestras, they can smell the blood. You know, they can they can really know if you are among this is not really what I have to.

And then you have. Navigate that that very complex water, that is why you need to have the ability to have your interpretation to be sure what you are doing, but also be flexible to change in the moment that you are playing the music live in the moment that that you are playing in. Look, we were talking about Beethoven, you know, doing the music, the dynamics, you know, Forte, if I have to be strong piano, you have to be if I have to be solved, Misophonia, if I have to be louder, you have Allegro, you have to be fast or agile.

Even in Beethoven, you have metronomic mark, for example, quarter, not 80. He he gave all of that information. But that is an information that can guide you to interpret that. It doesn't have to be because imagine everybody playing in the sadly the same way.

And do you think that was expected back then when he wrote all of that stuff? That was it expected that all the performers?

I don't think so, because for here in Los Angeles, we do a lot of premieres. We do a lot of commissions to new composers that we are very proud of.

You know, this last year we we commissioned 50 new works, you know, and we premiered all of them.

And and you see the process of the composers, the composers. They even when they listen to the music, the first time you see they revise the music, they change things, they change tempo. So imagine Beethoven at that time, you know, it was not the same speed. You play one concerto one time, five years later, he was playing again and Beethoven was already that, you know, and then other composers were bringing their own interpretation of Beethoven.

So again, well, it's that composer died, not the dog. I just saw him getting a little emotional because in the movie, I don't remember him dying.

No, no, no, he didn't. I didn't see the sequel, so I don't know.

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Now back to the show. Gustavo, how much do you sense obviously there was no radio, no records, no CDs, there was no way to hear these pieces of music unless they were played in front of you back in the day. Do you think that the assumption was made by Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, the rest of that these pieces of music would only get played when they conducted them? And therefore, there there sheet music was just a reminder for themselves about where it's going, how to conduct with this, where I want to get louder.

This is why don't we get softer, faster, slower and and less like unless a declaration or rules for people going forward in the future.

Is there any writing about that of you? Have you talked to any scholars about that? Yes, a lot. You know, the example for Mozart, for Beethoven, even for Bach. You know, he's a great conductor. He already died. Nicholas, of course, he was an Austrian conductor and he was a specialist in these music, even even though he was he was very open to all interpretations. But most of these composers, there were a great concert pianist, you know, Beethoven, Mozart, they play all of their concertos.

They conducted the image of the conductor or the work of a conductor didn't exist at that time. Oh, really? They were they were conducting their own pieces. They were playing their own, you know, in the middle. I think Mendelssohn was one of the first main conductors, you know, Felix Mendelssohn, that he was a prodigy and he was interpreting Beethoven.

And he rediscovered in a way by, for example, in jazz. But if you see, you know, there there is a lot of information to follow. And also, stylistically, you can see you can follow, you know, sometimes you cannot play a Mozart symphony with a thousand musicians, but you can play a Beethoven symphony, the ninth with a thousand people in the choir and with a big orchestra, you know, and they are so close.

I think all of them, they follow and a style. For example, Haydn was master of Beethoven, also of Mozart. And then the others were following that. And they were developing, you know, and a style I think that is the develop of of the interpretation. But if you listen to they are a lot of recordings. From the beginning of the 20th century, the orchestra sounded really different to how use and how really to the orchestra is now completely out.

Also, the way to play the way to play was completely was very free. It was nothing there. And in a lot of that, that is my sometimes my way to interpret things.

Is that because do you think it's a function of there's almost like an over teaching, an over a sense that everything has to be perfect, like everybody. There's so many different resources now and people can study forever. And back then it was much more organic as opposed to robotic. You notice you probably want to say that.

No, but we are in a place where it's very difficult to to make a difference between sometimes one orchestra and another because they play very similar.

Let's say the level is very high right now. Where where in other times the orchestras were like a club. So musicians going to play together like Schubert, you know, they Schubert at the others, they he got some musicians to play his music and all of that. It was for fun. Then it got, you know, a little bit more professional in all of that. But I think that that is the point of our art right now is perfection where we are trying to find.

But what perfection? Because if perfection doesn't exist, you know, it doesn't exist. You know, in a I love that space of day. The perfect mistake. You know, I perceive that as a beauty of the real action of what we do.

So, Gustavo, sometimes I get really overly sort of romantic about the notion that when I listen to a piece of classical music, I am traveling back in time.

Well, those were the pop stars of their time, right?

Yeah. Yes. Mozart was the guy, you know, those were the Beyonce's and exactly Rick Astley's and whatever everything.

So when was it that Mozart moved to the jungle? Because I know.

Well, again, that's all. No, well, I can tell you exactly that because that thing was inspired by my story.

You know, Mozart in the jungle, by the way. I did hear that. So that's true.

Yes. But weren't you on that or didn't you conduct something in that?

I was the stage manager. Oh, wow. Guy came, you know, Rodrigo, that he's the character came to Los Angeles as a guest conductor, and then I was the stage manager. So I help him, you know, to get to the station. And I told him that everybody. Hey, the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Gustavo, I want to ask you, because so many people think that classical musicians and conductors. And all of us are total nerds, which we kind of are I was and I still am, but but they think that's all we do all day long.

So do you ever like whenever you're done with a concert and your adrenaline is pumping and you're feeling great, d'hiver just come home and get wasted and blare rap music and play Dungeons and Dragons.

I love all music.

You do? Is there anything that you don't like? No, no, no, no. You know, maybe there is music that I don't like to listen all the time, but that doesn't mean that I don't like that music, you know, because I'm very open. I'm coming from my father is a trombone player and he played in a Latin band. He have a seven. So I wanted to be a soccer player. You know, I wanted to be like the Fania in New York and all of that, but I became a classical musician.

What is your instrument that you play? Violin. Violin?

Is that your favorite instrument or just the one you play? Oh, you know, for me to be a conductor, you have to know how to play all of them, not to play, but to know about the instruments, you know.

But I love the trombone because I think it was the instrument that inspired me to be a musician. I love the violin because my main instrument, but I love the piano, for example, that I play a little bit and I love all instruments in general. But yesterday, for example, I, I was reading and I put some Pink Floyd, you know, I love being Floyd. It was Dark Side of the Moon. I was listening yesterday and then I stop and then I was, you know, starting to rally their base.

But for example or I take some rap music that I love. Right. For me, the music doesn't have any kind of border. That is a reality. I don't like, you know, to put this music here or this music. It's not good, you know.

So here's a question I have for all of you. And I guess I'll start with Sean, then I'll go to Jason and then Gustavo, you go last. What is your favorite piece or composer or whatever of classical music? What's your go to? What's the one that that has always been? The thing you go back to is that's the piece that I love that really inspired.

You know, it's funny, I was going to ask Gustavo because I had I grew up with this piano teacher who was incredible and her husband, who was a conductor in the Chicago land area, Harold Bower, if you're listening, Harold. And he was incredible. And he was a big mentor to me.

And he I asked him I was I must have been like ten years old.

I was like, Harold, if you could only listen to if you only could listen to one composer for the rest of your life.

He was like, oh, well, that's impossible. I go, I know, but you have to pick.

So I would pick Mozart.

I think he said I think he said Schubert or Schumann, something unexpected. But mine would be Mozart. I mean, sure, he's probably the most popular, you know, but he is the pop music of the seventeenth century. Yeah, absolutely.

But that's my long answer.

Jason, I am embarrassed to say that I still have not finished just filling myself with Beethoven and Mozart. I've been I've actually gotten more and more into Haydn because I heard that he inspired Beethoven. So I was like, OK, so and I have I have noticed the similarities there as far as the how the scope of it, the size of it, the majesty of of what he what he wrote and also Tchaikovsky too, I've found as well. And plus I'm a big fan of The Nutcracker Suite.

And so, you know, I love that. But Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony is something I've really I've really gotten excited about it. There's this fun sort of Plecki parts to that get down really quiet. And I love Tchaikovsky gay guy, by the way.

But ultimately, I would say the Beethoven's piano concertos and the specifically four and five so so stuff.

I'll let you finish. I will say mine and I know I know so much less than all of you.

But the thing that I do generally do when it comes to this, only when it comes to this, I love Rachmaninoff, the piano concertos.

And those those speak to me in a way they're so the second one is famously the like the most difficult piano playing out there, isn't there just dark?

And also, do you know the song all by myself. All by myself. Yeah, right. That's based on a Rachmaninoff concerto.

Really all by myself is. Yes, I knew that also also based on it is do you know that the commercial goes the best part of waking up is for Gustavo.

I apologize. That's all right. But wow, that's good. Yeah. If you think I got it got to me. So that's that's mine. I know very little but it is something that always just speaks to me. Rachmaninoff always gets me.

I don't know. Who knows why things affect us the way they do? What about you? You are right. You know, you are all of you talking about the greatest composers. You know, Mannino is an amazing romantic composer and he's full of passion.

That is what is Rachmaninoff about passion, virtuosity, you know, full of feelings.

You know, even Haydn is the maestro, the master. You know, the music, I believe. And in Mozart, you know, even you know, if you listen to them, the name of Mozart is also, you know, I think one of my favorite composers is difficult, again, to say one composer for me.

But if you had to, because I will say, you know, for example, I love John Adams music like crazy. And I have the chance to premiere a lot of his pieces.

And he's a contemporary composer who is John Adams or Jonas Brothers that I like by John Adams. He's a Californian composer and he's great. He he wrote an amazing opera, Nixon in China, and he have write a lot of wonderful pieces for the Philharmonic.

But I would say difficult. But Beethoven, anything from him, you know, because he has that crossover from the classical period to the romantic period.

Right. So he kind of covers a little bit of both.

Exactly. But especially if, you know, I have conduct all the symphonies I have conduct all the piano concertos. I have to study his opera, his only opera, Fidelio.

But I will say, you know, when he was at the end of his life, he was writing chamber music. He stopped to write in symphonic music. And for me, that is the most complete music maybe that exist. You know, when you go to the late quartets of Beethoven, when you go to the Great Fugue, for example, that he wrote, that is music that still, you know, in the modernity's, I think not any composer that have achieved that kind of a, you know, level of intellectual, spiritual, a all of these things together, all of these human things together in superhuman things together in such a small dimension for musicians.

String quartet, the late string quartets.

How come he only did one violin concerto and one opera? I love that only one. And look, it was I think he did also an arrangement for piano for that concerto, because he's such a beautiful concerto. But I think it's because he was a piano player, you know, and he was very close to one of these great violins.

I forget the name that he wrote a violin concerto, but he wrote also sonatas for violin and piano. That is also that that he wrote that. I'd like to read all of that, the piano sonata.

So we just find our project together. Which one? Violin, piano, a violin that we do, of course.

But I have to go back to the violin. My God. Because that is difficult. I have four years that I don't play well.

Both screw it up together. And what did you say? The perfect mistake. Yeah. Settled in. You know, Beethoven did not. Did not. He did five those piano concerto nine symphonies, you know, and then you look at what Mozart did, what Haydn did there. He was not dare I say that prolific or am I am I know that a huge mistake to say.

I think his process was completely different. He was a genius in a kind of way. He didn't want to produce a lot of things. He wanted to. When you see the sketches, he's writing a lot of ideas, a lot of ideas. And to arrive to the to the piece that he wrote, it took a long time. Mozart was writing music like, you know, like a computer. You know, he wrote violin concertos because he played the concertos.

He wrote the piano concertos because he play he loved the clarinet. He wrote the first clarinet concerto. It's my favorite is amazing. And this is maybe the most beautiful clarinet concerto that was written by Mozart.

But, yes, I think Beethoven was in a more a how to say he was in another dimension in the sense of of writing the music in the reason he was also on his start. In his time, he was a superstar, you know, and everybody was like, crazy about him.

But he was more, you know, maybe because he was not listening also to that intimate world.

Where do you weigh in on Wagner? He seems like a very complex character.

Well, I have been studying Wagner these days, you know, and the thing with Bugner is the language also, you know, sometimes to listen to an opera for six hours in German. That is not a language that maybe you are not close. It can be kind of heavy. But I have to say that Bogner is one of the most creative and unique composers that exist. You know, he's the. Part of the puzzle romanticism is the horror of Malha of the beginning of the company's brookner, he was a very influential composer, wrote, and so many young composers came by the will for everything.

He was a vegetarian. All the artists were vegetarian or Maestro Wagner was he go back to eat meat. Everybody was following that. He was like he was a god. He was a god for the people. And he wrote these beautiful operas that I love. Of course, I get more close sometimes to Italian because I speak Spanish. So is is a Latin language, you know, and it makes more sense for me. But when I'm studying, for example, the language or I'm studying Lohengrin or the Gotterdammerung or Tannhäuser is also such a beautiful music.

And I try to to study the text to understand why the music is written.

And but I love Bugner Zucco. And now for our friend, Jimmy Kimmel's favorite part of the show, a word from our sponsors.

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Now Fanjul, more ways to win. Are there as many composers today that there were back in those days and we just don't hear as much about them because they aren't the rock stars of today as they were back then? Or has composing orchestral music become something that is not that widely done nowadays?

There are some composers that are not playing a lot and they are really would I have done some of them, especially, you know, beginning of the 20th century composers in and for example, there is an amazing composer, the father of the American music. We can say that is Charles Ives, for example.

And in one of my last projects with the Philharmonic before the quarantine was to play, we play all his symphonies, his fourth symphonies, you know, and he's really the voice of the of the American music, you know, because he didn't exist and American music wasn't European. The influence in classical music was very European. All of the maestros came from Europe. They studied with Brahms and with the main composers and teachers in Europe. And the education was very European.

And then came this guy, you know, writing folk songs, you know, music that he was listening from the military bands marching so and he create a world. Listen to Charles II, because that is the composer that is unique. And I love to do his music while you're recommending composers.

I want to ask you this before you go. If I wanted to continue to broaden away from Beethoven, Mozart through Haydn, Tchaikovsky, who if that is descriptive of what my taste is, what would you recommend? I listen to Lou. You have to go to Schumann.

You know, Robert Schumann.

You know, it's like a minor piano concerto is great. Exactly.

And he is the romantic of all romantics for me, you know.

And did he precede those or follow them? Yes.

You receive all of that influence. A Berlioz. He is an amazing composer, also French composer. He's Symphonie Fantastique is amazing. But also he's Fous Dimension of Proust is an amazing music opera. Mendelssohn is an amazing composer, too ill, let me tell you.

But I mean, you mentioned Ives, who obviously was so good as the voice of the snowman and Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.

Oh, no. Well, you missed it again. That's Buruli. That's Burl Ives. You got it. This is not it. That's my friend Gustavo.

How have you enjoyed, if you have conducting at the bowl when they put the movie up on the screen and then you and then you play the music from the movie, which I think is an incredible program that you guys they will think I saw what I saw 2001 there.

I saw it there. Yes. It's just it's just amazing. They pull everything out, will accept just the music and then the music is.

Blier, it's a very sad it's a very sad time because for the first time in ninety nine years, we will not have the season of the Hollywood Bowl.

And the other day went and it was empty. But, you know, at the same time as we were talking at the beginning, every crisis brings opportunities and we are rethinking what to do, how to do things.

But really, you know, I became a fan of the Hollywood Bowl more than conducting going to listen to concerts and, you know, having the chance, you know, to to to to listen to music, to share with my family dinner and drink something and be with my friends.

And what's your favorite concert that you've seen there? They have at the top of your head, I'm sure. Well, no, look, I will go.

I went to a pet sounds, for example, with Brian Wilson, and and I was dating my wife. And that was one of the best dates in my life. I went to a concert of Sting and Peter Gabriel was unbelievable. Amazing, but also great.

Yeah.

But also, you know, thousands of concerts.

I have done concerts with a with Latin artists like well, with Keri and with Natalia Lafourcade with Cuba and also the great classics. You know, I went to listen to a friend, you know, conducting various symphonies, Yo-Yo Ma playing all the cello suites, only him, you know, on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl, one cello player, thousand people. That was so amazing. So that was of the sale of the Hollywood Bowl a lot.

I played there last year with the Lubec sisters. You know, the two pianists. Yes. Yes.

The Carnival of the Animals. Speaking of empty Hollywood Bowl. Right. That's where well, you cut out.

So, Gustavo, I wanted to talk about Yolla because Yolla, which is the youth orchestra. Los Angeles, right, that you started, because it seems like the first thing that gets cut out of the federal budget or even local budgets is the arts.

At the same time, you know, we'll toss an extra trillion dollars to the armed forces when when every man, woman and child loves movies, television, theater, music, you know, so so talk about that a little bit and why it's so important to you, because I think it's I don't understand why we're constantly picking up the slack for the government to to fund the arts ourselves and to expose children to it.

This is this is a very important topic. You know, this is a very important discussion that that us artistic institution we have to talk, you know, because it's about education also. And I think any SuBo identity's culture, you know, is not an entertainment. Think it's not luxurious. Think you know. Right. As you can see, art or art have to be culture, have to be a right for everybody, and it have to be an essential part of the education of our new generations.

Contemplation, you know, creating beauty together, creating harmony together.

Well, then also, you know, as a kid, like I started at five years old, like I said, and I didn't even realize at such a young age that it teaches structure and goal setting and discipline, you know, and discipline. Yeah.

And how would you listen to each other and by the way, and spirituality on a certain level, too, or so. I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about actually. Yeah. All those things that are so vital to society.

Yep. But imagine that process. I can put the example of a child, you know, in his house playing a violin is creating his own world that he will share with other people in an orchestra for other people because he's the action. You know what we create that goes to the audience and the audience to receive and we have. So Juola started because I'm coming for an approach to an artistic social program in my country calling Sistema. That music is being used as a tool for social change in any have been very successful since nineteen seventy five that my maestro created.

We have achieved more than millions of children having access to music as part of their education. And that was the first thing that I committed. I said, you know, I will go to Los Angeles. I will accept this amazing honor if we create something that goes to the heart of the community. And this was the thing to create that youth orchestra, that it's not only for playing or it was an orchestra to help to these children to have a voice, because we went to the communities with difficulties in and we are we are talking about that.

You know, I think as Mother Teresa Calcutta said, the worst thing to be poor is to be no one is about to be excluded.

And that is the thing with poverty, you know, that is the thing with the imbalance of our societies. Then when you give the possibility to a kid to have art as part of their life, you know, you are giving something that is a treasure because you have all of these elements. You know, you have a spirituality, you have discipline, you are creating beauty for others, and you are creating beauty for yourself and for you and for the people.

You can see kids light up whenever there's a music program or any kind of art.

We need to give the chance to our children to have beauty in their life in the real sense of beauty, you know, to have the chance for them to contemplate, to create. And this is the thing with Yolla, and he'd have to be the thing with our artistic institution. Our artistic institutions have to reflect what is the community, you know, and sometimes we don't see that and people don't feel identified with that.

And that is why they don't have access or they don't want to go to that because classical music is elitist. I don't have the chance to go there. But then when you bring the classical music, for example, to the community, they feel that, you know, they are listening and they are important. So you are used to transformation. I believe that is a beautiful transformation and we are in the right place and this is good.

I don't want to open up a bigger conversation, but it goes to your question about or why is it that that governments, whether it's federal or state or municipal or whatever, cut funding to the arts because it goes any time you fund something like that, any time you educate people, people in power are very threatened by that because every occasion is a threat and the only thing you can do is to hold them down. And the only thing that can free people from poverty, et cetera, and their conditioned art is one of those things.

The arts are one of those things that can an education that can allow people to rise up.

I believe in utopias, you know, I believe in because I'm a result of of. A crazy dream that half of these men, these men have only nine people in front of him, nine young people, and he said, we will multiply these four million. This was my son, Jose Antonio Brown, in Venezuela in 1975. And then now you have we have we have a system in Sweden. We have the same program in different parts of the world, you know, to use music for social change.

Yeah, it's incredible.

I've heard you say that before, that you want to use music to to change society. And I think, you know, we were talking about John Williams before, dare I say. I think you're accomplishing for Los Angeles and the world what John Williams did.

Well, you know, with the Boston Pops and the world, which is making classical music popular and, you know, through through things that you're doing and, you know, programs like Yolla and and commissioning new works from new composers.

And so, you know, in my eyes, it's a nice I'm going to get a grown from my my cohorts here.

But it's a nice passing of the baton from John Williams to you, if you will, because, you know, you're keeping the classical genre alive and kicking and making people get inspired and want to explore more.

And so please don't ever stop doing that.

Yeah, I know. I just it's still you can still feel it in the city. How exciting it is that you chose here to be. And please don't ever leave. I mean, no, keep spreading that that wealth that you're doing around around the world in a very, you know, considerably cheap way. You know, you're not you're not distributing wealth monetarily. You're distributing wealth as you were talking about culturally. It's a very efficient and affordable way in which to do it, to empower and to enrich people that that are less fortunate.

And it is a very generous thing that you're doing. And we are proud as as Los Angeles goes to to call you our own, at least temporarily. I hope you I hope you make it a long, long time now.

Yeah. And I'm Angelina for a life. Yeah.

All right. Well, we love you, pal. Thanks for coming on. No, thank you. Thank you for letting me be here and have fun with you. Thank you very much.

Just so you know, I know I've put it out there about ten times already, but it is my dream to do something with you one day. Oh, that will do. Be sure I would. There's something crazy. I would love it.

Don't give him your number. All right. Thank you, my dear. Thank you. Bye bye now. Bye.

That that was I'm I'm just I'm glad the listener couldn't couldn't see my stupid grinning face all the way through that. I just I'm such a dork for classical music, and I love that you are.

I swear to God. And you know, the one thing I wanted to ask him, but I didn't think of the question until the end of it. And he was wrapping up in such a beautiful, eloquent way, as were you. I've always wondered, and you might know the answer to this, why when a conductor makes an arm gesture, it is always a beat before the music happens. In other words, you know, they're setting a tempo and it's never right on me.

I want the music to happen. It's just before. Why is that?

I think and I may be wrong, but I've had that question before. I think it's because that's the way the brain works. So you don't want to be right on it because that's already too late. Got it. And maybe it gives them a chance to, like, peek at the sheet music and that. Right.

And you see it. We should have had Neil Neil Tyson for that because it's light is faster than sound. So you see it and then the sound comes. That's slower.

That's why. Are you being serious? No, I'm not being serious, Sean. Shut the fuck up, guys. This is great.

Oh, God, I'm so glad you didn't embarrass us more, but I love Burl Ives, Beethoven, Patronus, his brothers wondering what the chemistry between growth mystery between Bonnie Hunt and Charles Grodin. Did you believe that there were. All right, guys. Well, that was great. Thanks for joining. Great, great, great guest. I don't know if that guest can be beat.

Well, don't try, Will, and I'll be competing for the silver from here on out.

All right, guys, we'll talk to you later. Jason, I know you love this very well. Yeah, I guess I'm ready.

We'll talk to you later. I feel so terrible. Smart. Smart as.