LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Philharmonic welcomed its 11th conductor, Gustavo Dudamel with a free concert at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night, as opposed to a staid program in Walt Disney Hall, the orchestra’s home. The more formal show is on Thursday. “Bienvenido Gustavo!,” as the concert was called, ended with a vivacious and exploratory rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, conducted by Mr. Dudamel. The orchestra collected a range of superb vocalists to solo, backed with a chorus of 200 handpicked from the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, the Our Lady of Los Angeles Spanish Choir, the Philippine Chamber Singers and other local ensembles.

But there has never been a gala quite like this to celebrate the arrival of a conductor to a major American orchestra. For more than two hours before Mr. Dudamel appeared, there were performances that brought together renowned artists from pop, jazz, gospel and the blues with young area musicians. Andraé Crouch, the Grammy-winning gospel singer and songwriter, performed with his New Christ Memorial Church Adult and Children’s Choir. The bass and trumpet player Flea — a founding member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, like Mr. Dudamel, a musician devoted to musical education — performed songs with an ensemble of youngsters from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, which he opened in 2001.

The Latin rock musician David Hidalgo, the blues great Taj Mahal and Alfredo Rodríguez, a young Cuban pianist, also took part. And the jazz giant Herbie Hancock played with an ensemble from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. When the actor Jack Black, introducing Mr. Hancock, paid tribute to Mr. Dudamel for galvanizing Los Angeles (“This dude’s on fire,” he said), the audience, which packed the 18,000-seat bowl, cheered and shouted, “Bienvenido Gustavo!”

That Mr. Dudamel, who made his American debut conducting the Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005, has already had an enormous impact on the cultural life of this city was clear when he made his first appearance of the night, conducting the YOLA Expo Center Youth Orchestra. YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles) is part of a two-year-old initiative by the Philharmonic to provide instruments and orchestra training to students, modeled on El Sistema, the vast music education system in Mr. Dudamel’s native Venezuela.

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Some 100 students were selected to perform on Saturday. At 28, his shaggy locks somewhat trimmed for the occasion, Mr. Dudamel looked like the youngsters’ cool older brother. The students, mostly from minority neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, gamely played through an orchestral arrangement of the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by Steven Venz, and their families had pride-of-place seating in the first rows of the bowl.

All American orchestras now espouse music education and reaching out to the community. But Mr. Dudamel, as a product of the Venezuelan program, shows a particularly intense desire to connect with young people and make music accessible to all. If, working with Deborah Borda, the president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he can make it central to the education of students in Los Angeles, Mr. Dudamel could change the template for what an American orchestra can be.

None of this would matter, though, if Mr. Dudamel did not have the musical substance to back up his vision. The depth of his skills and artistry is about to be tested vigorously.

He met the first test on this night with the performance of the Beethoven Ninth. It is always hard to assess the quality of an orchestra’s performance at an amplified outdoor space. The vocal soloists and the choristers were overamplified. In the finale, when Matthew Rose sang the first words of Schiller’s text, he sounded like the Bionic Booming Baritone. The soprano Measha Brueggergosman, the mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and the tenor Toby Spence, all exceptional singers, came through with a more balanced acoustic.

But Mr. Dudamel’s intentions were mostly realized. This was not the Beethoven’s Ninth some might have expected from a young dynamo. The tempos were restrained. Even in the scherzo, he strove for an organic steady pace. The slow movement had breadth and quiet intensity. And the finale, the choristers fired with enthusiasm, was exhilarating. It was affecting to hear Schiller’s references to the “starry canopy” performed outdoors on this balmy night.

After the prolonged ovation, Mr. Dudamel addressed the audience, which included many Latino families, in English and Spanish.

He spoke of being a proud Venezuelan and a proud South American but also a “proud American,” saying that there should be no north and south but “one American continent.”

As the fireworks began to light up, he then repeated the ending section of the finale. The maestro’s name lit up like a marquee above the performers- the perfect touch for the Hollywood Bowl to welcome Hollywood’s newest conductor.

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My Take: It’s all-too-common for a rookie to come out of the gate full-force. It’s a relief to see the young conductor keep his head about him and deliver a soulful, restrained program- even when the orchestra around him is so devoted to giving him a glitzy, LA welcome complete with fireworks and lights.

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