Wu Han – CHINA TAIWAN/UNITED STATES
Pianist Wu Han, recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year Award, the highest honor bestowed by the organization, enjoys a multi-faceted musical life that encompasses performing, recording, and artistic direction at the highest levels.
Her recent concert activities have taken her from New York’s Lincoln Center stages to the most important concert halls in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to countless performances of virtually the entire chamber repertoire, her recent concerto performances include appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, and Aspen Festival Orchestra.
She is the founder and artistic director of ArtistLed, classical music’s first artist-directed, internet-based recording label (1997), which has released her performances of the staples of the cello-piano duo repertoire with cellist David Finckel. Her more than 80 releases on the ArtistLed, CMS Live, and Music@Menlo LIVE labels include masterworks of the chamber repertoire with numerous distinguished musicians, the latest being Schubert’s Winterreise with baritone Nikolay Borchev. During the pandemic seasons, Wu Han designed and produced more than 270 digital media projects, including concerts and innovative educational programs, which sustained the art of chamber music in dozens of communities across the United States.
Currently artistic co-director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Music@Menlo, Silicon Valley’s innovative chamber music festival, she also serves as artistic advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series and for Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts, and in 2022 was named artistic director of La Musica in Sarasota, Florida.
Passionately dedicated to education for musicians of all ages and experience, Wu Han guides the CMS Bowers Program, which admits stellar young musicians to the CMS roster for a term of three seasons. She also oversees the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, which immerses some 40 young musicians every summer in the multi-faceted fabric of the festival. She was privileged to serve on multiple occasions as a faculty member of Isaac Stern’s Chamber Music Encounters in Israel, New York, and Japan.
A recipient of the prestigious Andrew Wolf Award, Wu Han was mentored by an elite selection of some of the greatest pianists of our time, including Lilian Kallir, Rudolf Serkin, and Menahem Pressler. Married to cellist David Finckel since 1985, she divides her time between concert touring and residences in New York City and Westchester County.