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2006 Fall Symposium
on
ASIA
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 April 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, NDR Radio Symphony Orchestra, New York
Philharmonic, Germany's RSO Radio Symphony Orchestra, 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 frequently
performs at 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, Silk Road Festival, Wien Modern and the
Yatsugatake Kogen Festival.
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 by Chinese American composer Chen Yi and Wu Man that
combines projections of Chinese calligraphy with pipa music,
exploring the connections between the two ancient Chinese
traditions. 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 with the Kronos Quartet and singer Asha
Bhosle You've Stolen My Heart on Nonesuch, an homage to the composer
of classic Bollywood songs, Rahul Dev Burman. Wu Man also recently
recorded Orion with the Philip Glass Ensemble for Pomegranate Arts.
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 13 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 Protege 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
http://www.wumanpipa.org.
Contact: Dave Heffner, ITS
Lynn Estomin, Art |
