Gustavo Dudamel Receives 2024 Glenn Gould Prize
Written by djfrosty on August 6, 2024
Venezuelan conductor and violinist Gustavo Dudamel received the 14th Glenn Gould Prize during a ceremony at Carnegie Hall on Aug. 2. Dudamel is music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and is set to become music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026.
Previous recipients of the Glenn Gould Prize, called Laureates, include Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Leonard Cohen, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Alanis Obomsawin, Philip Glass, Robert Lepage, and Oscar Peterson.
Dudamel, 43, is the first Laureate who had previously been awarded the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize, having been selected by his mentor and Glenn Gould Prize Laureate Dr. José Antonio Abreu in 2009.
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Selected by the Laureate themselves, the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize is awarded to an outstanding young artist demonstrating exceptional promise with a cash award of CDN$25,000. This year, Dudamel selected two young conductors, both also from Venezuela, to share the Protégé Prize – Andrés David Ascanio Abreu and Enluis Montes Olivar.
The Canadian Consul General to New York, the Hon. Tom Clark, and Glenn Gould Foundation executive director Brian Levine, presented the awards onstage at Carnegie Hall during a concert in which Dudamel conducted the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra.
“It is a huge honor to receive this prize,” Dudamel said in accepting his honor. “Years ago, I was a Protégé Prize winner, given to me by my Maestro Abreu. It makes me very proud, especially to be here with all these amazing young people from my country, Venezuela.”
Nominees for The Glenn Gould Prize are submitted through an open, public nomination process and can come from a broad range of artistic fields. An international jury comprised of artists and professionals from diverse disciplines convenes in Toronto, Canada (where Gould was born and where he died) to review the nominees and select the Laureate. The Glenn Gould Prize Laureate is awarded a cash prize of CDN$100,000.
The Glenn Gould Foundation, established in 1983, is a registered Canadian charitable organization dedicated to celebrating excellence in the arts and promoting cultural enrichment globally.
Gould, a Canadian classical pianist, won four Grammys and three Juno Awards. He is best known for Bach: The Goldberg Variations, which he recorded in both 1955 and 1981. The earlier recording was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1983. That same year, his digital re-recording won both a Grammy and a Juno for best classical album. Sadly, all of these awards were posthumous: Gould had died in 1982 at age 50. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2013.