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Between gigs at Wembley as Coldplay’s support act, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra brings its distinctive brand of infectious music-making to the Southbank.

An evening of audience roars begins as soon as Gustavo Dudamel first mounts the podium at the Barbican. 

The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Gustavo Dudamel and cuatro player Jorge Glem set the Edinburgh International Festival alight with a mix of Venezuelan music and a terrific Mahler 1. 

In Barcelona, Gustavo Dudamel and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela continued their Beethoven cycle with performances of the Fifth and Sixth. 

Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and the musicians of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra are undoubtedly the most prominent ambassadors for Venezuelan orchestral music today, and they hit the stage on Friday for their second night at Carnegie Hall’s opening weekend.

A case of “seeing double” in Salzburg, as Cecilia Bartoli brings West Side Story to her Whitsun Festival. 

An ambitious undertaking to perform both Brahms' piano concertos on the same programme, but not one that succeeded in this performance at the Royal Festival Hall.

Massive forces played with great precision and exquisite sound and balance in Messiaen's complex Turangalîla-symphonie, under the baton of Dudamel.

Rising superstar Gustavo Dudamel led mixed interpretations of two of Stravinky's best-loved scores; consistently good orchestral playing was augmented by occasional glimpses of brilliance. 

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in an "Immortal Beethoven" performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

A criticism of El Sistema orchestras has been that they have only one setting: "beefy". The first half here provided evidence to the contrary.

Collective understanding reached its apogee in the final movement. So deep was Dudamel's introspection that he had quite possibly forgotten that the audience was there.

Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony bring Beethoven and Wagner to Madrid and fill the hall with vitality.

Even without their trademark blue and yellow tracksuits,, the young (and now not so young) players of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra can still generate a certain frisson.

The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra fizzes with energy and excitement, but Dudamel too often pushes them to extremes.

Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela completed a four-day residency at Cal Performances with two concerts that rocked, rolled, and astounded audiences in Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall.

Three separate standing ovations answered the first concert of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra's London residency, in which they played Beethoven and Britten with all of their trademark joie de vivre and panache.

Can a concert have ever been so eagerly anticipated? In 2006 Richard Holloway, then chair of the Scottish Arts Council, went on a fact-finding visit to Venezuela to look at El Sistema, where intensive classical music tuition in schools and the formation of orchestras has developed a successful track record of transforming attitudes in desperately poor and violent communities.

There are few greater disappointments than an event which fails to live up to high expectations: film adaptations of favourite books and the January sales seem like obvious examples of events which are often perfectly pleasing but drowned under hype.