Explore the Latin side of the New York Philharmonic led by Gustavo Dudamel. The renowned Venezuelan conductor builds musical communities and is already changing New York City through collaborations with many kinds of artists.
OMG: The New York Phil’s press material is now in English and Spanish. ¡Gracias Gustavo. Un abrazo fuerte!
New York Philharmonic 2026 Latin
MAY 2026
Gustavo Dudamel and the Spanish Harlem Orchestra 🇦🇷 🇧🇷 🇨🇺 🇲🇽 🇵🇷 🇻🇪
Leading classical and Latin orchestras together
Argentine, Brazilian, Cuban, Mexican, Venezuelan artists or influences
– David Geffen Hall, Wu Tsai Theater; Lincoln Center, Wed-Fri, May 6-8, 7:30pm
– United Palace, Washington Heights, Sat, May 9, 7:30pm
This is a big deal. Both orchestras are category leaders. People get mad when I say an artist is the best. But as a salsa dancer who lived in Puerto Rico for years, Spanish Harlem Orchestra plays the best 1970s style New York salsa dura. They play salsa classics and their own compositions. It’s all very danceable. Just put on the record and have fun. Dudamel’s Venezuela has great salsa traditions too.
The Lincoln Center program includes works with Cuban, Brazilian, Argentine, and Mexican composers or themes. All of the composers have New York City connections.
Gershwin: Cuban Overture (1932)
Gershwin was the Jewish composer of “Rhapsody in Blue” which perfectly captures the feeling of New York City’s hustle and flow. He composed the Cuban Overture after a vacation in Havana. When he visited, Cuba was one of the most advanced societies in the Americas, but older traditions still survive there today.
Maracas, claves, güiro, and bongos give the piece the feeling of a travelogue film score. You can hear moments in Havana and in the countryside. Some of it sounds Spanish. He could connect with Afro-Cuban traditions because he was already deeply entwined with related African American traditions.
Villa-Lobos: “Toccata: O trenzinho do caipira, from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2”
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) is often called the most important composer of Latin American classical music. He also defined some of the repertoire for modern classical guitar. He was a Brazilian from Rio who traveled his country collecting Indigenous, Afro, and folk music.
He was fascinated by rural culture. Big cities and capitals are very similar all around the world. To touch the heart of the people, you have to go to the countryside. Villa-Lobos also spent time in New York during the 1940s and 1950s bloom of modern jazz (bebop) and Afro Latin jazz (cubop).
“Bachianas Brasileiras” are his masterpiece. He saw a relationship between Bach (hence Bachianas) and Brazilian folk music, so he infused Brazilian traditions with Baroque counterpoint. There is a counterpart in Brazilian Baroque architecture, which though European inspired, was created by Brazilian hands.
The work’s title “Toccata: O trenzinho do caipira” refers to taking a train ride through the Brazilian countryside. The toccata is a Baroque concept that in this piece represents the train. You can hear it start off in the opening passage. Then Villa-Lobos shows you Brazil.
Ginastera: “Milonga” arranged for orchestra
The Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) is another pillar of Latin American classical music. His folk tradition was the Indigenous-African gaucho (Latin American cowboy) of the South American pampas (great plains). His compositions gained intensity over time until he sounded a lot like Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” or even a “Twilight Zone” soundtrack.
The piece is not a milonga as in Argentine tango. It was originally composed in 1938 as a song “Canción al árbol del olvido (Song to the tree of forgetting), for a poem by Uruguayan poet Fernán Silva Valdés. Ginastera transcribed it for piano in 1948. This version is arranged for orchestra.
Gabriela Ortiz: “Antrópolis” (2018)
Ortiz is a world-renowned Mexican composer who blends Mexican folk, Afro-Caribbean, and classical new music traditions. She recorded her 2024 Grammy-winning album “Revolución Diamantina” with Dudamel and violinist María Dueñas. Ortiz was Carnegie Hall’s composer in residence for the 2024-2025 Season.
In 2025 and 2026, she became the first artist in history to win the Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for two years in a row. She actually won three Grammys in 2026, and was named Classical Woman of the Year by “Performance Today.” She is on a hot streak.
“Antrópolis” is an orchestral tribute to Mexico City’s mid-20th-century seedy nightclubs/cantinas/cabarets. You can dance there, but people don’t really go for the dancing. There used to be places like that in Times Square. They still exist throughout the Latin world. If you are a dancer and go to one of these places, you’ll be disappointed, but if you go for other reasons, you may have a happy ending.
Ortiz envisioned a city of antros, each with its own mysteries. The word “antro” derives from the Greek or Latin word for a cave. It’s a dark place to hide things, but also to transform. In the Mexican context, caves are the entrance to the underworld, but it’s not the Christian underworld. It’s just where dead people live.
Spanish Harlem Orchestra selections
We don’t know what they are playing, but it will be interesting. There are many connections between SHO’s Puerto Rican salsa and the classical artists in the Lincoln Center program.
Salsa is son Cubano with Puerto Rican bomba and plena influences that developed in New York City’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods from the 1950s into the 1970s and 1980s. Tite Curet Alonso, the salsa poet who composed many classic salsa hits, said he was inspired by the Brazilians.
Ginastera’s “Milonga” isn’t the type of milonga associated with Argentine tango. But if it were, both salsa and tango are based on the Cuban habanera. They are related. I recently found a Zitarrosa milonga done in salsa rhythm. You can dance either style to it.
Ortiz’ city of dance clubs would be perfect places for the Spanish Harlem Orchestra to play, because salsa is dance music.