- Wu ManComposer
- Wu Man is a Chinese pipa and ruan player and composer. She is an exponent of the Pudong School of pipa playing. Wikipedia
- Born: 1963, Hangzhou, China
The Knights with Wu Man play concerto for Pipa
https://vimeo.com/59565707
NPR Tiny Desk Concert
http://youtu.be/Rg_iZhUlyRE
Wu Man
Pipa, composer (China) Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso
and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Grammy Award-nominated
musician Wu Man has carved out a career as a composer, soloist, and
educator giving her lute-like instrument—which has a history of over
2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary
music.
Through numerous trips to her native China, Wu Man has premiered
hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia
projects to both preserve and create awareness of China’s ancient
musical traditions. Her adventurous spirit and virtuosity have led to
collaborations across artistic disciplines allowing Wu Man to reach
wider audiences as she works to break through cultural and musical
borders.
On December 6, 2012 Wu Man was named Musical America’s 2013 Instrumentalist of the Year, the first traditional musician ever to receive this prestigious award. Gramophone
magazine stated, “ A one-woman force of nature, she is a key figure not
only for bringing Chinese traditional music to new audiences, but in
becoming a muse for all manner of contemporary composers.”
During the 2012-13 season Wu Man toured to Taiwan and Hong Kong to
premiere her new creative program titled “Wu Man and Aboriginal Friends
from Taiwan”, an installment of her “Return to the East” project. She
also traveled to Singapore in June 2012 to collaborate on a theatrical
project by TheatreWorks’ artistic director Ong Keng Sen called Lear Dreaming. Based on Shakespeare’s King Lear,
the work presented an Asian-inspired interpretation of the drama that
culminated in two sold-out world premiere performances during the 2012
Singapore Arts Festival, and required Wu Man to both act and play the
pipa.
Later this season she toured for solo recitals across the United
States and will continue to tour with the Silk Road Ensemble. She was
the featured soloist in a nine-city United States tour with New York
City’s The Knights, with whom she premiered her own composition Blue and Green.
Wu Man also performed at the 2013 Auckland Arts Festival in New Zealand
both in a solo recital and together with the Kronos Quartet in a
performance of their theatrical project, A Chinese Home.
In early 2012 Wu Man released her album Borderlands, the
final installment of Smithsonian Folkways’ acclaimed ten-volume “Music
of Central Asia” ethnographic series tracing the history of the pipa in
China. With the support of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the
Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the
project led her to the outskirts of the country to collaborate with
musical cultures along the Silk Road including Tajikistan and China’s
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China. The result is a
DVD and sound recording of folk musicians who would not otherwise be
heard outside these regions, and who represent the very beginnings of
the pipa’s musical tradition.
In September 2012 Wu Man released a documentary DVD titled Discovering a Musical Heartland: Wu Man’s Return to China
as part of her ongoing “Return to the East” project. In the film, Wu
Man documents her most recent expedition through China’s remote regions
as she unearths ancient musical traditions that are in danger of being
lost among the more popular musical trends in the country today. Over
the course of this independent project Wu Man interviewed family musical
bands to expose musical rituals and lifestyles to audiences outside of
China.
Brought up in the Pudong school of pipa playing, Wu Man became the
first person to receive a master’s degree in pipa performance from the
Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She is a frequent collaborator
with the Kronos Quartet and was also the first artist from China ever
to perform at the White House.
She has performed with major orchestras around the world and
frequently premieres works by today’s leading composers including Tan
Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, and
Chen Yi. Since moving to the U.S. in 1990, Wu Man’s role as an
ambassador and advocate for Chinese music has been recognized when she
was made a United States Artists Broad Fellow in 2008 and also a Bunting
Fellow of Radcliffe at Harvard University in 1998-99.
| "I
have always tried to understand and learn from music and cultures
outside of my own, which I think is especially important at this time.
For that reason, I have spent my entire professional career attempting
to bring new life to the tradition that surrounds my instrument and to
use music as a way to communicate."
– WU MAN
|
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