Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar de Venezuela
The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela (SBSOV) was founded by maestro José Antonio Abreu and is the flagship orchestra of the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras and Choirs of Venezuela. Under the music direction of maestro Gustavo Dudamel, its 170 members – who have been named UNESCO Artists for Peace – have been trained under the El Sistema’s Orchestral Academic Program, taking master classes with distinguished professors and performing under conductors of international stature such as Sir Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Kristof Penderecki, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Lorin Maazel.
Between 2000 and 2014, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra toured in Europe, Asia and the Americas, appearing at festivals such as the BBC Proms in London, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Semperoper of the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden, Carnegie Hall’s “Lights, Voices from Latin America”, the Lucerne and Salzburg festivals, the Istanbul Music Festival and the Immortal Beethoven Festival held in Los Angeles.
Different venues around the world have had the SBSOV on their stages, including the Royal Festival Hall, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and many others in cities such as Oslo, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Athens, Granada, Madrid, Barcelona, Zurich, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal and Bogotá.
The SBSOV has been resident orchestra at the Lucerne Festival at Easter (2010); the Walt Disney Hall (January-February 2012) – as part of the Mahler Project in which Dudamel led Mahler’s nine completed symphonies with the LA Phil and the SBSOV in Los Angeles and later in Caracas – ; the Salzburg Festival (2013), where it became the first foreign orchestra to take on the ritual of performing Mozart’s Mass in C Minor in St Peter’s Abbey; the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (2015), where the Bolívars gave three concerts and eight performances of Giacomo Puccini's “La Bohème”, becoming thus the first orchestra not based at Teatro alla Scala featured by the prestigious opera house in one of its productions of “La Bohème”.
The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel are exclusive artists of Deutsche Grammophon, with which they recorded Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh's Symphonies and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, as well as their successful album “Fiesta”, and an album that features works by Tchaikovsky, including the Fifth Symphony and “Francesca da Rimini”. In 2013, the SBSOV recorded the soundtrack of Alberto Arvelo's film “El Libertador”, under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, who composed it. A year later, they recorded an album featuring extracts from Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy “Der Ring des Nibelungen”.
The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela gratefully acknowledges the generous support provided by the Hilti Foundation with the purchase of instruments.
As of August 2016