Dear Lara and effecting change It’s been three months since I attended the premiere of Dear Lara at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Since that time, survivor Lusiana Lukman, who named her abuser Boris Berlin for the first time in the film, also documented her story in The Toronto Star and led a campaign to pressure the Royal Conservatory of Music to respond to her allegations, which they failed to do until this week after additional pressure from pianist Jonathan Biss, who resigned in protest from RCM. As per usual Katherine Needleman and Lara St. John continue to write compellingly about these events and are must-reads for people who care about classical music. I hope that the words and actions of these brave women and allies encourage us all to find ways to push back against the kind of culture that make stories like Lusiana Lukman’s all too common.
Lara St. John has done something incredible: she has made a documentary about sexual abuse in the classical music industry, including her abuse as a child at Curtis that is premiering at Santa Barbara International Film Festival on this coming Friday, February 6, 2026.
I have seen an early version of this film and it is incredibly touching to see Lara and the survivors she interviews tell their own stories, in their own words. Lara saw a gap and stepped into it. She did not know anything about film-making when she started this project, only that a story needed to be told and she could help do it. It is no small feat to have one’s first film be a full-length documentary, let alone accepted at a festival. The premiere of this film is a testament to her extraordinary tenacity in advocating against abuse.
In case you missed it, the Washington Post published an important article by Geoff Edgers about Katherine Needleman’s crucial advocacy against sexual abuse in classical music. Although I am glad for the focus that the article brings to this problem, I was disappointed by much of the framing in it. Below is a gift link to the article and my letter to the editor in response. I hope that you will read it.
We Had No Idea is a project of We Track Foibles, LLC. It was launched in July 2025 with 32 people in the directory. Since the launch, we have received hundreds of submissions. Thank you to the many people who have sent feedback and submitted articles. Here’s everything that’s changed so far.