- April 4, 2025
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Pianist Wu Han is a busy woman. Last week found her in Lawrence, Kansas, near Kansas City, where she was in the middle of a tour that included 13 concerts in 16 days.
In addition to performing around the world, Wu and her husband, cellist David Finckel, serve as the artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York and Silicon Valley’s Music@Menlo. They also run a classical music recording company and teach.
On her own, Wu (she follows the Chinese tradition of using the first name on second reference) is the artistic advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series near Washington, D.C., and for Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts.
With a schedule like that, it seemed unlikely that Wu would take on the additional role of artistic director of La Musica, a chamber music festival founded in Sarasota in 1984. But not long after her dear friend and La Musica co-founder Derek Han died in 2021 of complications from COVID, Wu accepted the job, which Han held at the time.
“I told my husband, ‘I can’t imagine Sarasota without La Musica,’” Wu said in a phone interview from Kansas. “I was so busy, but I couldn’t let the virus disrupt or destroy Derek’s legacy. I said yes out of love to my friend Derek.”
Also helping to tip the scales in favor of Sarasota was La Musica’s new executive director, Joan Sussman. She joined the festival in 2021 with help from a recommendation from Wu, who knew Sussman when she worked for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. “Joan told me, ‘You helped bring me here. Now I need your help,’” Wu said.
Before coming to Sarasota, Sussman held arts positions in New Haven, Connecticut; Charlotte, North Carolina; and at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, where 250 volunteers have to be managed.
Wu first met Han, a pianist, at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1985. “Everyone thought he was my brother or my husband,” Wu recalls. “Many people thought we had the same last name. We became friends and stayed that way.”
Han was one of four co-founders of La Musica, which produces a chamber music festival in Sarasota each April. This year, it will be held April 11-17 at the Sarasota Opera House. The other three co-founders of La Musica were Bruno Giuranna, Judy Sherman and Piero Rivolta.
How did La Musica come to be in Sarasota? Origin stories vary depend on who’s telling them, but here’s Wu’s version of the tale.
“Derek and Bruno both had houses in Asolo, Italy, right next to each other. They heard about the Historic Asolo Theater inside The Ringling and they thought it would be cool to visit the theater. After seeing the beautiful theater, they decided to start a festival,” Wu recalls.
Han ended up living in Sarasota for nearly two decades. Giuranna, a celebrated Italian viola player who turns 92 on April 6, no longer travels.
“Bruno loves the restaurant Mediterraneo on Main Street and Captain Brian’s Seafood Market” on North Tamiami Trail, Wu volunteers, noting that love of music, food and family was something Giuranna and Han shared during their many years of friendship.
“Bruno ran kind of an Italian music mafia and he let Derek join,” she added. An American, Han was born in Columbus, Ohio, to Chinese parents.
In addition to the four co-founders, La Musica grew and flourished over the years through the efforts of Sally Faron, who remained involved until her death in 2023, and Fred Derr, who still is on the board.
Originally, La Musica held its annual chamber music festival in the Historic Asolo Theater, built in 1798 inside a Renaissance-era palace in Asolo, Italy.
The jewelbox theater was acquired by The Ringling in 1949 by Everett “Chick” Austin, the first director of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. After being painstakingly reassembled, the theater opened to the public in 1952.
The Historic Asolo Theater was perfect for the chamber music format, originally developed for a small group of musicians to play inside a palace salon. Like opera, classical music was dependent on the support of royal patrons and other aristocratic benefactors.
And like opera, chamber music suffers from the reputation that it is only suitable for “grey hairs,” older people or the stuffy members of the upper class who wore wigs of that color back in the day.
Under the artistic direction of Wu and executive director Sussman, La Musica has been trying to jazz up its image and broaden its market with a new logo and fun marketing hooks. It has also been extending its season, adding concerts in January, February and March in addition to the April festival.
“The first thing we did was change the logo,” Sussman said in an interview. “It’s now bold. Our former artwork was conservative. The first year (after I took over), our tagline was ‘Music to Knock Your Socks Off’ and we gave away socks to our audience. Then it was beach towels.”
Unlike at some of the Orioles’ spring training games against mediocre teams, free merchandise isn’t the draw at the La Musica Chamber Festival. It’s the chance to see world-class musicians perform in a beautiful setting.
But calling attention to itself is a necessity for La Musica. During the festival’s nearly 40 years in existence, the Sarasota cultural scene has exploded. Hometown artistic institutions such as the Sarasota Orchestra, Sarasota Opera and Sarasota Ballet, not to mention Florida Studio Theatre and Asolo Repertory Theatre, have flourished and expanded.
“When La Musica started, Sarasota’s arts scene wasn’t as vibrant as it is now,” Wu says. “We were one of just a few groups bringing in world-class musicians.”
While tourists come to Sarasota and snowbirds move here for the arts, there are only so many hours in the day for performances and galas.
La Musica’s original home, the Historic Asolo Theater, only has 286 seats. As the chamber music festival became more popular, it moved to the Sarasota Opera House in 1992.
It has remained there ever since. But as the founders aged and arts competition intensified, La Musica struggled to fill the opera house’s 1,100 seats in the early part of the 2020s. With Wu and Finckel’s star power and the top-notch musicians they’re bringing in for this year’s festival, attendance shouldn’t be a worry.
This year’s program includes three concerts. The first, on Friday, April 11, features the works of Beethoven, Martinu and Dvorak played by Wu on piano, Chad Hoopes and Kristin Lee on violin, Aaron Boyd and Milena Pájaro-vande Stadt on viola and Dmitri Atapine and Finckel on cello.
The lineup for the second La Musica concert features Beethoven, Dvorak and Dohnanyi. Taking the stage on Monday, April 14, will be Orion Weiss and Wu on piano, Boyd, Hoopes and Lee on violin, Pájaro-van de Stadt on viola, and Atapine and Finckel on cello.
The festival ends Thursday, April 17, with a program showcasing Barber, Bloch and Faure. Weiss and Wu will play piano. They will be joined by Lee and Boyd on violin, Pájaro-van de Stadt on viola and Atapine on cello.
All three festival concerts are preceded by talks that begin at 6:15 p.m., 45 minutes ahead of the 7 p.m. curtain time.
