This simple formula might have altered the path of musical history.
Maria Kitsopoulos, a member of the New York Philharmonic since 1996, arrived for practice in late winter of last year with a cello on her back and a Rubbermaid container in hand. She had hidden miniature slices of handmade cheesecake within, the rich filling bound together by two layers of flaky pastry. “Musicians love free food,” she said. “They see that box and come running.”
She made certain that the first portions were distributed to the stage manager and stagehands. (“They’re the ones who find cushions for you,” she explained.) She then handed the last squares to an assistant of the guest conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, the Venezuelan superstar with a halo of dark curls who took over the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009 and has led it to glory ever since.
She didn’t know if her small offering would be left to languish in a dressing room. But at the end of the concert later that evening, after the thrilling race to the end of Schumann’s Fourth Symphony and with the audience aroar, Dudamel turned to the cello section, gave her a thumbs-up and mouthed, “Great cheesecake.”
He apparently never forgot. In February, it was announced that Gustavo Dudamel, a peculiar personality simultaneously exalted in the insular classical-music world and revered by the public, will take over as music and creative director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. (Trumpets blare!) When Dudamel came to Lincoln Center to meet with his new colleagues, he told Kitsopoulos that her cheesecake was a crucial role in his choice to traverse the continent, according to The New York Times.
Surely, the powers that be at the Philharmonic had come up with a slew of enticements in their bid to lure Dudamel away from the West Coast. Was it, in the end, a simple cheesecake that tilted the scales? I contacted Wolfram Koessel, a member of the American String Quartet who frequently performs with the Philharmonic, my daughter’s cello teacher. “Have you seen this cheesecake?” I texted back.
Dudamel turned to face the cello section and said, ‘Great cheesecake.’
What type of cheesecake survives and triumphs, etching itself in the minds of both children and the wise? The filling has simply cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla extract as ingredients. And the crust isn’t coaxed and worked over delicately. It comes in a can: crescent-roll dough that unfurls with a twist — “it’s so fun to open,” Kitsopoulos remarked — and is somehow precision-engineered to resemble the creamy, milky purity of the fattest butter (even if the dough may include vegetable shortening instead).
Unknown to Kitsopoulos, who grew up in New Jersey, she had stumbled on a Southwestern tradition: a mash-up of cheesecake and sopapillas, pieces of dough dropped into hot oil until they puff into little pillows and often served dusted with cinnamon sugar and dripping with honey. The origins of sopapillas, also spelled sopaipillas, go back to Latin America — the word is believed to derive from Mozarabic, a medieval Spanish-Arabic vernacular — and regions of the United States that were once part of Mexico. In 2003, Texas briefly proclaimed the sopaipilla as its official state pastry (alongside strudel) and “a much-savored part of Texans’ shared cultural identity.” “Sopapilla cheesecake” was the dish most Googled during Thanksgiving week in Texas and Oklahoma from 2004 to 2013. Oklahoma State University even features a recipe on its website, one of seemingly countless online.
Kitsopoulos took a recipe from Pillsbury, developed by Deborah Harroun, the writer of the Taste and Tell blog. The cellist made a few adjustments: a little less sugar and a lot more cinnamon. Baking, like music, demands discipline and precision, but in the kitchen, Kitsopoulos is the least fussy of bakers, approximating more than measuring. Where Pillsbury advises first rolling out the dough for the topping on parchment paper, she just plops it on. “I’m so not an exact person,” she said with a laugh. “I’m flying by the seat of my pants. Sometimes I forget I have something in the oven.”
In December, when the young Finnish maestro Klaus Mäkelä came to town — “he looks exactly like my son,” she said — she gave him brownies. “He had eight of them,” she recalled in wonder. “I don’t think they give the guest conductors enough food.”