Wu Man
Wu Man is an internationally renowned pipa virtuoso, cited by the Los Angeles Times as "the artist most responsible for bringing the pipa to the Western World." The pipa is a lute-like Chinese instrument with a history of more than two thousand years. Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Wu Man is now recognized as an outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire as well as a leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music by today's most prominent composers such as Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Bun-Ching Lam and many others.
Wu Man continually collaborates with some of the most distinguished musicians and conductors performing today, such as Yo-Yo Ma, David Zinman, Yuri Bashmet, Cho-liang Lin, Dennis Russell Davies, Christoph Eschenbach, Gunther Herbig, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Stern, and the Kronos Quartet. She is a frequent participant in Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, an artistic and educational organization founded by Mr. Ma to study the ebb and flow of ideas along the ancient trade route, and performs regularly throughout the U.S. and Europe with Mr. Ma as part of the project. Wu Man also often performs and records with the groundbreaking Kronos Quartet. They recently gave the world premiere of a Terry Riley's Cusp Of Magic, written for Wu Man and the Quartet, at UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall in May 2005, and continue to perform the work together throughout the U.S. and Europe this coming season.
Wu Man has also performed as soloist with many of the world's major orchestras, including the Austrian ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Moscow Soloists, German NDR and RSO Radio Symphony Orchestras, New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Her touring has taken her to the major music halls of the world including Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, the Great Hall in Moscow, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Opera Bastille, Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls and the Theatre de la Ville. She has performed at many international festivals including the Bang on a Can Festival, Festival d'Automne in Paris, Henry Wood's BBC Promenade, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Le Festival de Radio France, Lincoln Center Festival, NextWave!/BAM, Ravinia Festival, Silk Road Festival, Tanglewood, Wien Modern and the Yatsugatake Kogen Festival in Japan.
A major participant in the performance of new and contemporary music, Wu Man has given several world premieres throughout the past few seasons including Chen Yi's Ning! with Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall; Bright Sheng's concerto Nanking!Nanking! with Germany's NDR Radio Symphony Orchestra directed by Christoph Eschenbach, as well as Sheng's Songs for Cello and Pipa premiered at the White House with Mr. Ma, and the chamber opera Silver River premiered at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Spoleto Festival 2000 USA; Ye Xiaogang's Pipa Concerto with Germany's RSO Radio Symphony Orchestra, directed by Gunther Herbig; Lou Harrison's Concerto for Pipa and Orchestra with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra for Lincoln Center's Great Performances, directed by Dennis Russell Davies; and Tan Dun's Ghost Opera with the Kronos Quartet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Wu Man recently collaborated with Philip Glass and five other world musicians on Orion, a seven-movement work comprised of music drawn from the indigenous traditions of Australia, China, Canada, the Gambia (Africa), Brazil, India and Greece commissioned by Cultural Olympiad in Athens. Wu Man gave the world premiere of the work with the Philip Glass Ensemble and featured soloists on June 3, 2004 in Athens, and during the summer of 2005 she performs the U.S. premiere of the work at Ravinia and gives its West Coast premiere at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, CA. Wu Man and the Philip Glass Ensemble will also perform Orion during the 2005-06 season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, Bass Hall in Austin, TX and the Melbourne Festival in Australia.
Also during the 2005-06 season, Wu Man will participate in several performances throughout the U.S. of Ancient Dances, a multimedia work that combines projections of Chinese calligraphy with pipa music, exploring the connections between the two ancient Chinese traditions. The work is collaboration between Wu Man, Chinese American composer Chen Yi and videographer Catherine Cowen. Wu Man will give the world premiere of Ancient Dances in October 2005 in Philadelphia, and the New York premiere in April 2006 at Carnegie's Zankel Hall. Other performances of Ancient Dances will take place in Boston, Duke University, Fayetteville, AR, La Jolla, Miami University, Scottsdale, University of CA, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pittsburgh. Additional highlights of Wu Man's 2005-06 season include the New York premiere of Terry Riley's Cusp Of Magic with the Kronos Quartet and a performance with Indian Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle at Zankel Hall (also in April 2006); as well as performances of Cusp Of Magic at the Chinese Music Festival in Amsterdam, Tan Dun's Concerto For String Orchestra and Pipa with the Nashville Symphony, and Philip Glass' Sound of a Voice at the Tucson Chamber Music Festival. Wu Man gave the world premiere of Sound of a Voice, a music theater piece, at the American Repertory Theater in Boston during the 2004-05 season. Also last season, Wu Man made an appearance at the Winter Arts Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia with Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists; undertook U.S. and European tours with the Silk Road Project; gave the UK premiere of Bright Sheng's The Song and Dance of Tears with Yo-Yo Ma at the London Proms and performed Tan Dun's Ghost Opera for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Wu Man has recorded several albums on various labels, including a recording of Tan Dun's Ghost Opera with the Kronos Quartet on Nonesuch, a solo recording, Wu Man - Pipa From a Distance for Naxos, several other solo recordings for Nimbus Records and two recordings with the Silk Road Ensemble and Yo-Yo Ma for Sony Classical. Wu Man's recent releases include a CD of world music entitled Wu Man and Friends on the Traditional Crossroads label, on which she performs with musicians from Uganda, Ukraine and the southern Appalachian Mountains, and a recording of Orion with the Philip Glass Ensemble for the Orange Mountain label. Nonesuch will release a new recording with the Kronos Quartet, Wu Man and singer Asha Bhosle, homage to the composer of classic Bollywood songs, Rahul Dev Burman, in August 2005.
Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man studied with Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master's degree in pipa. When in China, Wu Man received first prize in the 1st National Music Performance Competition among other awards. She also participated in many groundbreaking premieres of works by a new generation of Chinese composers. Wu Man currently lives in San Diego, and she formerly lived in Boston for 12 years, where she was selected as a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. Wu Man was selected by Yo-Yo Ma as the winner of the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Prot�g� Prize in music and communication. She is also the first artist from China to have performed at the White House. For more information on Wu Man, please visit www.wumanpipa.org.
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