As Gustavo Dudamel prepares to leave L.A. Phil, his love affair with L.A. isnt over

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On the second weekend of May, Gustavo Dudamel gave the New York Philharmonic a salsa shock.He gleefully brought the startled players together with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, an uptown salsa and jazz band, for concerts at Lincoln Center and Washington Heights.

The city‘s classical music fans treated it as a cultural breakthrough; Dudamel is expected to transform the orchestra as a cultural institution when he returns in the fall as its music and artistic director.A day later he was back in Los Angeles to begin rehearsals at a Walt Disney Concert Hall that had been fantastically transformed by Frank Gehry for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s staging of “Die Walküre.” Transformation — be it cultural, orchestral, personal — has marked Dudamel’s 17 years as music (and more recently artistic) director of the L.A.Phil, which is now coming to an end with his three weeks of concerts in Disney to close the season June 7, followed by a celebratory weekend at the Hollywood Bowl in late August.

But meeting with Dudamel in his dressing room after a “Walküre” rehearsal (the opera begins Tuesday night at Disney and runs for six nights, an act a night, the full opera performed twice) , he says as he has said before, he does not think of this as a culmination, merely the beginning of a new adventure.He’s apartment shopping in New York.

But he is keeping his house in Los Angeles.He’s also departing with two very long new titles as “Die Walküre” premieres: the Diane and M.David Paul Artistic Cultural Laureate of the L.A.

Phil and Jane and Michael Eisner Founding Director and Conductor Laureate of Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA).“We are talking about projects,” he says.

“Look, I’m coming back for two weeks in December,” when he will lead Beethoven programs.He returns in the spring.

The Bowl will always be a second home.“I’m living here and I’m ...