When he came home from school at lunchtime, he would arrange his Fisher-Price toy figures as if they were an orchestra, making a little box for the conductor, and put a record on the phonograph; he would ask her not to break up the orchestra while he was in music class so that he could resume directing the musicians on his return. One time his grandmother took him to see his father perform in a classical concert in Barquisimeto. “He was very small, I thought he was going to fall asleep,” she told me. “And he was completely attentive to details of the instruments. He said, ‘Grandmother, I like this music.’ ”
Gustavo Dudamel's toy story in tomorrow's NYT Magazine