“Gustavo Dudamel, now 26, is the most-talked-about young musician in the world. Sir Simon Rattle, the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, has called him ‘the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across.'” His upbringing in Venezuela’s El Sistema music education program and rapid rise through the ranks of the conducting world are already legend within the music business. “As an international celebrity whose career was incubated by the sistema, Dudamel is uniquely able to champion its expansion at home and promote its adoption abroad.”