Dudamel‘s back again. Expect to see him a lot.

This is one crazy video. Crazy-awesome, that is. I love how the audience is so into the music, they are standing up, dancing, clapping, cheering, throwing stuff. Why not? How can you sit still in this sort of atmosphere, with this music? And wow, those musicians nail it, even while standing up and dancing! Have a great Mardi Gras!

Leonard Bernstein‘s Mambo from West Side Story:

There are plenty of accounts that European and American audiences used to be this rowdy at concerts. The current “stuffy” atmosphere at Art Music concerts is often blamed on: 1) the late 19th century rise of the middle-class, which sought ways to distinguish itself from the lower class, and thus created a set of “rules” for concert-going; 2) the subtle but long-running smear-campaign against Art Music in movies & TV (who listens to Art Music? The losers, the squares, the fuddy-duddies, and the bad guys, who invariably have English accents); 3) Gustav Mahler.