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Last month, architect Frank Gehry and Los Angeles Philharmonic CEO Chad Smith gave me a masked hard-hat tour of the nearly finished Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center at Inglewood. Gehry’s reimagining of an abandoned bank building may not be able to satisfy all the demands for systemic change that have been directed toward classical music privilege. But it just may be the single most heartening start.
music students from Inglewood and surrounding communities, is neither something lost nor something found during our disastrous year with coronavirus. Youth Orchestra Los Angeles is, instead, Gustavo Dudamel’s educational initiative begun in 2007, shortly after he was appointed music director of the L.A. Phil. Over the years, a program that started with 80 students has grown to 1,300 and led to exceptional institutional and individual successes that are now a model for orchestras everywhere.