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From “Also Sprach Zarathustra” to Also sprach LL Cool J…
Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic managed to pack something for everybody into a guest-filled appearance Saturday evening at Coachella. Setting up shop on an outdoor stage in Indio instead of their usual springtime climes at downtown L.A.’s Disney Hall, the orchestra thrilled the festival’s dressed-down attendees with a 50-minute set that included stars like Laufey, Maren Morris, Becky G, Zedd and the aforementioned rap icon doing their hits with symphonic help. But the LA Phil itself was the frontman, as it were, when it came to sprinkling some of classical music’s greatest hits into the performance.
Earlier in the week, Variety sat in on rehearsals for the Coachella performance at the Hollywood Bowl (with the promise of not spoiling LL Cool J’s or any other surprise guest appearance in advance) and spoke with Dudamel and his associates about why they wanted to add a show at a pop festival to the famed conductor’s list of accomplishments in leading the LA Phil. “It will be beautiful,” Dudamel said on Tuesday, taking a seat backstage at the Bowl after the Phil ran through practice performances with LL and Laufey. “You know, I didn’t sleep last night,” he admitted. “I was like: Wow, tomorrow is the first rehearsal. Wow! The adrenaline today in the rehearsal…” He trailed off. “It is exciting. I’m nervous, but good-nervous.”
Dudamel and the LA Phil top brass said that this was the culmination of a notion that dated back a long time into the conductor’s 17-year tenure with the orchestra (which will end when he moves cross-country to a new role leading the New York Philharmonic next year), even though it was only in the last year and a half to two years that they held serious discussions with Coachella producers about how to pull it off. Dudamel made it clear that the idea was not something that originated with the festival or anywhere outside of his own hopes and desires.
“No, no, no, no. This was a dream that I had for many years,” he affirmed. “We have the opportunity to do many wonderful things here at the Hollywood Bowl, this wonderful venue where we have the chance to interact with wonderful pop artists on different music styles that we have the chance to do. But in the context of a festival that represents a culture itself, it was always a dream. We were talking a lot about how to do it and when, and I think it’s perfect timing. We have built something very beautiful together with the team.”
The LA Phil’s performance on weekend 2 will have some different guest stars. But the first show Saturday climaxed with LL Cool J doing a medley that interspersed his hits, including the climactic “Rock the Bells,” with some great moments in the history of classical music — a mash-up that reps say marked a first in the symphony’s long history.
The superstar hip-hop artist doing the festival at all was also historic. “LL Cool J has been invited for as many years as Coachella’s been around, and he’s never been to Coachella, as a guest or anything,” noted Joanna Rees, the LA Phil’s vice president of programming. “And so it was Gustavo and the Philharmonic and this opportunity that is bringing him out to the desert. The way that he did the orchestral collaboration came out of this amazing Zoom we were on with with Todd — LL Cool J — and Gustavo talking this idea through, and watching the two of them go through what was in their minds, you could just see it happening live. They were both getting each other super excited about the ideas and the possibilities — and now it’s happened.”
“Oh yeah, that was fun,” added Dudamel, for his part, following the rehearsal with LL. “My god! I’m a big admirer, from years ago. This is a dream.” No wonder the conductor eagerly accepted the gift of an identical yellow cap from the rapper at the conclusion of Saturday’s performance and posed alongside him with it.
LL Cool J and Gustavo Dudamel & LA Phil the perform at the Outdoor Theatre at the 2025 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival on April 12, 2025 in Indio, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella)
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Added Megan Umber, the Phil’s chief programming officer, “He actually has basically sampled, in his medley, Beethoven’s 5th and Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird.’ And I’ve never seen anybody do it, actually, for all the years that we’ve done pop collaborations — properly fitting the orchestral music (of the great composers) into his songs.”
At rehearsals, Dudamel said, “Everybody was dancing. I told to the orchestra, ‘I’m so happy conducting, but I wish I could be in the middle of the crowd and enjoy the moment.’ … I wish I can tele-transport myself and be in the two places at the same time.” He didn’t actually leave his perch when the collaboration transpired Saturday, but the cameras did catch him shifting his attention turning around to beam at LL as he kept his baton aloft.
The other performers included Maren Morris doing her original breakout hit, “My Church”; EDM favorite Zedd breaking with form and genre to play piano alongside a gospel choir on his more sedate “Clarity”; and vocal turns out front by two prominent Latin artists, Becky G and Argentine rap duo Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso.
Becky G and Gustavo Dudamel & LA Phil the perform at the Outdoor Theatre at the 2025 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival on April 12, 2025 in Indio, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella)
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But it’s Laufey who brought the most LA Phil experience, amid all these newcomers to the symphonic field. She first performed with the Phil two summers ago at the Ford, then returned in 2024 with a quickly-sold-out gig at the Bowl that was filmed for a concert movie that premiered on Imax screens this past December. (Audio for much of the show was also just released on a double-LP that came out Saturday for Record Store Day — with every single participating LA Phil member credited in the packaging.) For her own first Coachella appearance, Laufey sang her most famous number, “From the Start,” and also performed the live premiere of her new single, “Silver Lining.”
Icelandic singer/songwriter Laufey performs on stage with Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philarmonic during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 12, 2025 in Indio, California. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP)
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“Of course she come from a family where her mother plays the violin,” Dudamel said of Laufey, “and she plays the cello. And she has such a deep, charming, beautiful style, which goes so well with what we are doing. She’s amazing. Amazing.”
This weekend, wrapped around the first Coachella date, the LA Phil is keeping up its regular springtime schedule at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown L.A., where they’re presenting Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” The Coachella audience got a taste of that, too, as Dudamel led a stunning excerpt from that work, as rearranged by Max Richter. That highlight was placed amid some more traditionally pieces from the classical songbook, like the Strauss cue that most modern audiences primarily recognize from its spot at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001.” “Gustavo has also picked certain pieces that are just beautiful because he is thinking about that cohesive visual of being out in the desert and hearing something really gorgeous,” said Umber. “And then, there’s the incomparable John Williams’ ‘Imperial March,’ which I think is just gonna bring down the house.”
“We are bringing part of our soul — of Los Angeles’ soul — which is John,” Dudamel said, of invoking the legendary “Star Wars” composer in Indio, “For us, always, having a chance to pay homage to him and play him is the best, and public will recognize that immediately.”
Speaking of the overall experience, Dudamel said, “I think what we are bringing is music as one. This is something beautiful because we are diving between Wagner, Beethoven, Vivaldi and Bach with Laufey, with Paco, with LL Cool J, all of these wonderful artists. So, it’s a journey. And you will see — there’s not any wall. Everything is a bridge. All music connects with the other, with the next, with the next. And we have the chance to show that music is one, when normally styles are very divided: ‘You are classical, you don’t touch this, and if you are pop, classical is so far’ — it’s not like that.
“Imagine this: We are talking about Coachella, a festival. Wagner wrote his music for a festival, and it was the most cool thing, for people to get go and listen to his operas and all of that. Wagner had his Coachella every year! And people recognize that music immediately. You know, Beethoven, my God… he didn’t have his own festival, but this is my personal opinion: He is the biggest genius, musically. of all times. And he was a rock star, the way people followed him and were connecting through his ability of transforming, through his music at the time, writers and poets.
“I think that is the reason why we are doing this: music, when it’s genuine, when you are enjoying it on the stage and you share that with people, makes people immediately connect. Immediately, if you really empathize with everything that is happening, you connect immediately with the soul of people, and people feel that they own that moment. And it’s gonna happen here. I think people at Coachella will feel how excited, how humble, excited and honored we are to be on that stage, doing all of this music as one. Yes, we have all of these wonderful artists, but it’s all like a big symphony, you know? No separations.”
Gustavo Dudamel & LA Phil the perform at the Outdoor Theatre at the 2025 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival on April 12, 2025 in Indio, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella)
Getty Images for Coachella
