Luca Franzetti is a musician whose artistic journey weaves together a wide range of seemingly dissimilar experiences. He is a cello soloist, conductor, advocate for human rights through music, thinker, and a multifaceted character with diverse interests and backgrounds. He is, without doubt, someone who defies easy categorization.
Recently, his career has focused on solo performance and conducting, with a strong commitment to supporting human rights through his art.
The son of the concertmaster of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala during the eras of Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti, Luca studied piano, violin, and guitar before discovering the cello at the relatively late age of seventeen. Just a year later, in 1988, he made his public debut. While his early musical explorations included blues, spirituals, and pop, from that point onward, he dedicated himself fully to classical music—though never completely severing ties with his musical roots.
Still young, he quickly rose to prominence, holding the position of principal cellist in prestigious orchestras both in Italy and internationally.
He has worked with renowned conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Sir Charles Mackerras, John Eliot Gardiner, Trevor Pinnock, Andris Nelsons, Oleg Caetani, and collaborated for over a decade with Claudio Abbado.
Luca has also crossed musical borders, performing alongside artists from very different genres, including Herbie Hancock, Stewart Copeland, Goran Bregović, Enzo Jannacci, and Lucio Dalla. Following his time with Riccardo Chailly’s Orchestra Verdi, he performed with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Flanders Philharmonic, Opera North in Leeds, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.
His relationship with Claudio Abbado extended beyond the professional sphere. Abbado personally invited him to visit José Antonio Abreu’s celebrated “El Sistema” in Caracas (Venezuela), a turning point that profoundly reshaped Luca’s worldview and sense of purpose. From that moment, his solo career became interwoven with a mission: to bring music to serve human rights. This led him to perform and teach in Palestinian refugee camps, including two visits to the Gaza Strip.
Luca is a musician firmly rooted in the classical tradition, yet deeply engaged with the present and looking toward the future, decidedly unconventional and never content with simple definitions.
On July 19, 2022, Luca was invited to perform J. S. Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello in Via D’Amelio, Palermo, before a vast crowd commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Their courageous stand against the mafia cost them their lives. The three-hour solo performance carried a powerful message: music and culture are not luxuries, they are “weapons of mass construction,” capable of opposing the world’s greatest evils: war, organized crime, drought, and climate change.
Today, Luca continues to give solo recitals and conduct concerts in Italy and abroad, united by a single guiding motto: “Music is not wine. Music is water.”
