La Musica pairs two musical carnivals for its 40th anniversary

When Camille Saint-Saëns composed his whimsical “Carnival of the Animals” in 1886 in a small Austrian village where he retreated to lick his wounds after a disappointing tour, cataloging species of flora and fauna was a popular pastime.

Of course, not all amateur naturalists had access to the 14 species honored by Saint-Saëns in his “Carnival,” which wasn’t published and widely performed until 1922. But elephants still roamed Africa and Asia and kangaroos fascinated and frightened visitors to Australia.

A little more than a century later, big game hunters, development and pollution from fossil fuel have threatened the survival of certain species. 

According to the independent conservation organization WWF, between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year. The loss of species occuring on earth today is estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.

In a world with more than 8.3 billion people, what can one individual do to draw attention to this alarming situation? New York-based composer Michael Stephen Brown took action by composing a companion piece to Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of the Animals” that he calls “Carnival of the Endangered Animals.” 

Brown’s work contains 14 movements (the same as the original “Carnival”) dedicated to such animals as the orangutan, the buff-cheeked gibbon and the cassowary. It will make its world premiere in Sarasota on April 9-10. Brown will perform with other members of La Musica Chamber Music in two concerts, one at the Sarasota Opera House and the other at Mote Science Education Aquarium. 

“Carnival of the Endangered Animals” and the original “Carnival of the Animals” will be played together in a program that is the culmination of La Musica’s 40th anniversary season. 

A native of Long Island, Brown decided he wanted to be a pianist at the age of 2 after hearing the music of Raffi, Billy Joel and Mozart that his parents played for him. 

His first keyboard was a small Casio. Then he inherited an upright piano from a neighbor in Oceanside, New York. “I still have this vivid image of a piano being wheeled down the street,” he says. 

Brown got regular access to better pianos when he became a star student at the Juilliard School of Music. In an interview, Brown gives his girlfriend, filmmaker Angeline Gragasin, credit for collaborating with AI on the poster for “Carnival of the Endangered Animals,” but he is surprisingly modest about his own accomplishments.

They include a 2025 MacDowell fellowship in music composition, 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and the 2010 Concert Artists Guild Competition. It was at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, that a poet told him about the cassowary, a bird found in Australia that sometimes kills humans, Brown recalls. 

A prolific composer, Brown got the idea for “Carnival for the Endangered Animals” when he was hiking with some friends in Sedona, Arizona. His brainstorm took shape and was officially co-commissioned by several chamber organizations, who will each perform the work. Brown’s “Carnival” will have its New York premiere in 2027 when it will be performed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 

Courtesy image

Although La Musica is a Sarasota-based chamber ensemble managed by executive director Joan Sussman, its artists overlap with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. That’s because La Musica artistic director Wu Han also holds that role at the Lincoln Center ensemble along with her husband, cellist David Finckel.

The couple, who tour extensively and own a classical music recording company, also are the founding artistic directors of Music@Menlo in the Silicon Valley. They will be stepping down from that position at the end of the 2026 festival after 25 years. 

On her own, Taiwan-born Wu, 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, where Brown’s “Carnival of the Endangered Animals” will travel to after Sarasota.

With her vivacious personality, Wu is a musical sun in a solar system around which many other musicians rotate. Some younger artists come to her attention through Finckel, to whom she has been married since 1985. He’s a professor of cello at Juilliard School and is currently artist-in-residence at Stony Brook University.

Brown first met Wu when he was a Juilliard student and auditioned for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS2 ensemble for up-and-coming chamber players. He was accepted into CMS2, now called the Bowers Program, and has been in Han’s orbit ever since.

Says Brown of his mentor-turned-friend, “She’s a force of nature. She never sleeps. She’s always coming up with new ideas. She inspires us.”