Since moving to the United States from China in 1990, pipa virtuoso Wu Man has not only introduced the traditional Chinese instrument and its repertoire to Western audiences, she has successfully worked to give this ancient instrument a new role in today's music, making the pipa available to a larger audience and seeing it valued by musicians and composers for its unique tonal qualities and virtuosic character.
Adamant that the pipa, a lute-like instrument with a history of more than two thousand years, does not become marginalized outside of China as only appropriate for Chinese music, Wu Man has striven to develop a place for the pipa in all art forms: in solo and quartet works, concertos, opera, chamber, electronic, and jazz music as well as in theater productions, film, dance and collaborations with visual artists including calligraphers and painters.
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.
Cited by the Los Angeles Times as "the artist most responsible for bringing the pipa to the Western World", 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, David Robertson and the Kronos Quartet. She is a principal member of 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.
Wu Man has performed as soloist with many of the world's major orchestras, including the Austrian ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Moscow Soloists, Nashville Symphony, 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 WOMAD Festival, Bang on a Can Festival, Festival d'Automne in Paris, Henry Wood's BBC Promenade, Hong Kong Arts Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, 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.
Highlights of Wu Man's 2008-09 season include international tours with the Silk Road Ensemble to Qatar, United Arab Emirates and India as well as U.S and European tours. Wu Man will launch The Phoenix Symphony's 2008-09 season and its inaugural World Music Festival with performances of Lou Harrison's Pipa Concerto in September. She will also perform this concerto with the Louisiana Philharmonic in February 2009. Wu Man will perform the Canadian premiere Tan Dun's Pipa Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Peter Oundjian in March 2009. Additionally this season Wu Man will perform with longtime collaborators the Kronos Quartet at the Barbican Centre in London, where they will perform Tan Dun's Ghost Opera, and at Carnegie Hall, for a special concert celebrating the 45th anniversary of Terry Riley's In C.
A major participant in the performance of new and contemporary music, Wu Man has given several world premieres throughout the past few seasons. During the 2005-06 season Wu Man premiered Ancient Dances, a multimedia work by Chen Yi and Wu Man that combines projections of Chinese calligraphy with pipa music, exploring the connections between the two ancient Chinese traditions. She gave the world premiere of Ancient Dances in November 2005 in Philadelphia, and the New York premiere in April 2006 at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, and continues to perform the work throughout the U.S. and Europe. Wu Man and the Kronos Quartet gave the world premiere of Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic, written for Wu Man and the Quartet, at UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall in May 2005 and the New York premiere at Zankel Hall in April 2006.
Additional world premieres performed by Wu Man include 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 gave the world premiere of Philip Glass' Sound of a Voice, a music theater piece, at the American Repertory Theater in Boston during the 2004-05 season.
Wu Man 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 in 2004 in Athens, and has performed the work throughout the U.S and internationally in subsequent seasons, including its U.S and New York premieres.
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 recordings include: Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic with the Kronos Quartet on Nonesuch; Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago that features Wu Man's performance of Lou Harrison's Pipa Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the CSO Resound label; and New Possibilities with the Silk Road Ensemble on Sony/BMG. Wu Man has also released a CD of world music entitled Wu Man and Friends on the Traditional Crossroads label, and a recording of Orion with the Philip Glass Ensemble for the Orange Mountain label. Nonesuch released a new recording with the Kronos Quartet, Wu Man and singer Asha Bhosle called You've Stolen My Heart in August 2005, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album. The album pays homage to the composer of classic Bollywood songs, Rahul Dev Burman.
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 Protégé 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.
