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TBD:
PBD
T.B.D.


~ intermission ~

 

Foundation for
Chinese Performing Arts

 

Wu Man 吳蠻, pipa
www.wumanpipa.org

Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer 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 concert tours she 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 her to reach wider audiences as she works to cross cultural and musical borders. Her efforts were recognized when she was named Musical America’s 2013 "Instrumentalist of the Year, " marking the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed on a player of a non-Western instrument.

Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Ms. Wu 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 Tan Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, and many others. She was the recipient of The Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998, and was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive The United States Artist Fellowship in 2008. She is also the first artist from China to perform at the White House. In 2015, she was appointed Visiting Professor of three major Chinese conservatories: her alma mater the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Xi’an Conservatory of Music, and Zhejiang Conservatory in her hometown; she has also served as Artistic Director of the Xi’an Silk Road Music Festival at the Xi'an Conservatory.

Ms. Wu’s concert schedule during the 2019-20 season includes chamber and orchestral performances that range from traditional Chinese music to newly commissioned works. At the Universities of Maryland and Chicago in October, she leads a multi-cultural ensemble as they explore music drawn from manuscripts of China’s Tang Dynasty (618-907), highlighting in performance the influence of this era’s traditions on the music of ancient Japan—from Noh theatre to gagaku court music. In both performances, she is joined by wind and percussion players Yazhi Guo (suona and Chinese percussion), Kaoru Watanabe (taiko and Japanese flute), and Tim Munro (Western flute).

Less than a month later, Ms. Wu appears with the Silkroad Ensemble, of which she is a founding member, in the world-premiere performances of resident composer Osvaldo Golijov’s newly commissioned song cycle Falling Out of Time. The work is a musical interpretation of the book by David Grossman, which narrates a journey "out of time" as parents grieve the death of their child. Falling Out of Time is the centerpiece of the Silkroad Ensemble’s seven-city eastern U.S. fall tour, which begins with the work’s world premiere at College of the Holy Cross, where the piece took shape in workshops beginning in fall 2017. Additional performances take place at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (Germantown, TN), Wolf Trap (Fairfax County, VA), and Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA), and excerpts are performed as part of programs at Penn State (State College, PA), the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the Peace Center (Greenville, SC). This tour follows world premieres last season in which Ms. Wu joined the Silkroad Ensemble on tour across the U.S., Asia, and Australia in celebration of the group’s 20th anniversary. Ms. Wu also tours Europe this season as a Master Musician in the Aga Khan Music Initiative—a group of performers, composer-arrangers, teachers, and curators who create music inspired by their cultural heritage of the Middle East, South and Central Asia, West Africa, and China.

All of Ms. Wu’s orchestral engagements this season feature music originally written for her, a reflection of her leading role in cultivating a robust concerto repertoire for the pipa. She performs Tan Dun’s Pipa Concerto (with Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra and the South Bend Symphony), which the composer adapted from his Ghost Opera written for Ms. Wu and Kronos Quartet; Zhao Jiping’s Pipa Concerto No. 2 (with the Lexington Symphony), which was written for her and premiered by her at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; Houston-based Taiwanese composer Shih-Hui Chen’s pipa concerto Jin (with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra in the work’s Asian premiere); and Zhao Lin’s concerto for pipa and cello A Happy Excursion (with cellist Qin Li-Wei and the Singapore Symphony), a work that she and Yo-Yo Ma premiered last season with the Hangzhou and New York Philharmonics.

Additional concerto performances take place as part of Ms. Wu’s residency at Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts, marking the first time that a performer of a traditional instrument has been an NCPA resident artist. She performs Zhao Lin’s A Happy Excursion, as well as Vincent Ho’s Rejuvenation: A Taoist Journey, which she originally premiered with the Toronto Symphony. She also gives lectures, works with faculty and students, leads master classes and workshops, and performs music from her recording Our World in Song with the Daniel Ho Trio, following separate performances of this program in Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Ms. Wu has performed as a soloist with many of the world’s major orchestras, including the Austrian ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Moscow Soloists, Nashville Symphony, German NDR and RSO Radio Symphony Orchestras, New Music Group, 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 in London, and the Theatre de la Ville in Paris. She has performed at many international festivals including the Auckland Arts Festival, Bang on a Can Festival, BBC Proms, Festival d’Automne in Paris, Festival de Radio France et Montpellier, Hong Kong Arts Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Lincoln Center Festival, Luminato, Mozart Festival in Vienna, NextWave! / BAM, Ravinia Festival, Silk Road Festival, Sydney Festival, Tanglewood, Wien Modern, WOMAD Festival, and the Yatsugatake Kogen Festival in Japan. She continually collaborates with some of the most distinguished musicians and conductors performing today, such as Yuri Bashmet, Dennis Russell Davies, Christoph Eschenbach, Gunther Herbig, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and David Zinman.

Among Ms. Wu’s most fruitful collaborations is with Kronos Quartet, with whom she began collaborating in the early 1990s. They premiered their first project together, Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1995. The work was recorded and released on Nonesuch in 1997. Additional Kronos Quartet recordings featuring Wu Man for Nonesuch include Early Music, on which she plays the zhong ruan and da ruan (string instruments related to the pipa) in John Dowland’s Lachrymæ Antiquæ and the Grammy-nominated You’ve Stolen My Heart, an homage to the composer of classic Bollywood songs Rahul Dev Burman, featuring Ms. Wu alongside the Quartet, singer Asha Bhosle, and tabla player Zakir Hussain. She participated in the Quartet’s 40th Anniversary celebration concerts at Cal Performances in Berkeley, CA and at Carnegie Hall; was Artist-in-Residence with the Quartet in February 2016; became the second inductee into the "Kronos Hall of Fame" (joining Terry Riley); and composed her first piece for western instruments, Four Chinese Paintings, for the Quartet’s "50 for the Future" project. Last season in Washington, D.C., she and the Quartet reprised their multimedia work A Chinese Home, conceived in collaboration with theater director Chen Shi-Zheng and premiered at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in 2009.

As a principal musician in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad project, Ms. Wu has performed throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia with the Silkroad Ensemble. She is a featured artist in the documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble, as well as on the film’s 2017 Grammy Award-winning companion recording, Sing Me Home ("Best World Music Album"), which includes her original composition Green (Vincent’s Tune) performed with the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. She has recorded six albums with the group: Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet (2002), Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon (2005), New Impossibilities (2007), the CD/DVD A Playlist Without Borders / Live from Tanglewood (2013), and Sing Me Home (2016) on Sony Classical, as well as Off the Map (2009) on World Village. Her Silkroad Ensemble performances in recent years have included tours of the U.S. during the regular season and to summer festivals such as Tanglewood, Wolf Trap, Blossom, Ravinia, and Hollywood Bowl, a tour of Asia, and performances with Mark Morris Dance in Berkeley and Seattle.

Adamant that the pipa does not become marginalized as only appropriate for Chinese music, Ms. Wu strives to develop a place for the pipa in all art forms. Projects she has initiated have resulted in the pipa finding a place in new 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. Her role has developed beyond pipa performance to encompass singing, dancing, composing, and curating new works. She has premiered works by Chinese composers including Zhao Jiping, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, and Chen Yi. Other notable projects include Orion: China, co-written with Philip Glass for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and recorded the following year; and Blue and Green, an original composition that she premiered with The Knights. Recent projects have seen her rediscover, embrace, and showcase the musical traditions of her homeland, projects she has dubbed "Wu Man’s Return to the East." In 2009, she was asked to curate two concerts at Carnegie Hall as part of the "Ancient Paths, Modern Voices" festival celebrating Chinese culture. Ms. Wu and the artists she brought to New York from rural China for the festival also took part in two free neighborhood concerts and a concert presented by the Orange County Performing Arts Society in Costa Mesa. In August 2012, she 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, she travels to little-explored regions of China to uncover ancient musical traditions that have rarely been documented before. Among the musicians she met on her journey were the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, which she brought to the U.S. for the first time—touring to 11 cities around the nation.

Ms. Wu boasts a discography of over 40 albums including the Grammy Award-winning Sing Me Home ("Best World Music Album") with the Silkroad Ensemble on Sony; the Grammy Award-nominated Our World in Song, featuring familiar folk songs from around the world arranged by her with Hawaiian instrumentalist Daniel Ho and Cuban percussionist Luis Conte; and Elegant Pipa Classics, which combines traditional pipa repertoire with modern compositions, both released by Wind Music. Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago features her Grammy Award-nominated performance of Lou Harrison’s Pipa Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as a Grammy-nominated recording of Tan Dun’s Pipa Concerto with Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists on Onyx Classics. In May 2012, she released her Independent Music Award-nominated CD / DVD Borderlands, which traces the history of the pipa in China. It is the final installment of the acclaimed ten-volume "Music of Central Asia" ethnographic series produced by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In Wu Man and Friends, released on Traditional Crossroads in 2005, she blends Chinese, Ukrainian, Ugandan, and Appalachian traditional music, performing alongside musicians from these regions.Her solo recordings include Pipa: From a Distance, released on Naxos World Music in 2003, and Immeasurable Light, released on Traditional Crossroads in 2010. Fingertip Carnival, her latest release for Wind Music, explores the connections between Chinese and Mexican folk music and each culture's use of stringed instruments with the San Diego-based son jarocho group Son de San Diego.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Ms. Wu 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. Accepted into the conservatory at age 13, her audition was covered by national newspapers and she was hailed as a child prodigy, becoming a nationally recognized role model for young pipa players. She subsequently received first prize in the First National Music Performance Competition among many other awards, and she participated in many premieres of works by a new generation of Chinese composers. Her first exposure to Western classical music came in 1979 when she saw Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing in Beijing. In 1980 she participated in an open master class with violinist Isaac Stern, and in 1985 she made her first visit to the U.S. as a member of the China Youth Arts Troupe. She moved to the U.S. in 1990 and currently resides in California.

For more information on Wu Man, please visit wumanpipa.org or her artist page on Facebook.

(August 2019)

吳蠻是國際樂壇上中國音樂的使者與琵琶音樂的代言人,更是跨界音樂與跨文化交流的標誌性人物。美國《洛杉磯時報》評論"吳蠻是將琵琶介紹給西方的重要音樂家……"。她五次獲得美國格萊美唱片"最佳演奏"和"最佳世界音樂專輯"獎提名,併入圍台灣金曲"最佳傳統音樂專輯獎"。

吳蠻的藝術成就使她超越了琵琶演奏家的角色,成功地塑造出傳統音樂家職業生涯的典範。她不僅有深厚的傳統音樂造詣,也是國際公認的詮釋現代琵琶音樂的權威演奏家。她通過策劃新穎的合作項目和創作近百首新曲目,與全球一流的樂團、作曲家和演奏家進行合作,並融合戲劇、舞蹈和視覺藝術,讓中國傳統樂器——琵琶成功走向國際,大大擴展其觀眾群體,擁有世界各地的樂迷。

2013年,吳蠻被《美國音樂》評為"全美年度演奏家",成為該獎項設立以來第一位獲此榮譽的世界傳統器樂演奏家。美國《留聲機》雜誌對吳蠻的評語是："一位女性憑藉自身天性的力量,不僅為中國傳統音樂帶來新的觀眾,也成為當代作曲家靈感的繆斯,她是一個關鍵人物。" 《美國音樂》在給她的頒獎詞中稱："吳蠻是當代演奏家的典範。更重要的是她的工作使西方古典音樂的發展邁進了一大步。"

吳蠻出生於忠和陳澤民等名師。1989年,獲得中國民樂器演奏比賽琵琶冠軍。 1990年移居美國。吳蠻曾獲"哈佛大學研究學者獎"、"美國藝術家"大獎和加拿大"格倫・古爾德新人獎"(Glenn Gould Prize),以表彰她對音樂與文化交流的開創性貢獻。吳蠻是該獎設立以來第一位獲獎的女性和傳統演奏家。1998年,她曾應美國前總統克林頓夫婦之邀在白宮演出,成為有史以來第一位受邀的中國音樂家。

吳蠻的音樂冒險精神不僅體現於琵琶演奏,她還立志作中國音樂的傳播人,並積極提倡傳統音樂藝術的推廣和保護。她曾擔任美國著名卡內基音樂廳"中國藝術節"部分節目的策劃及主持。她曾到中國西北地區和台灣原住民區,發掘目前仍存於農村的道教儀式、皮影、地方戲曲和民歌中最原始的音樂。她將這些傳統的祭典和喜慶音樂帶進卡內基音樂廳,讓中國民間音樂家成為主角。她參與了多個民族音樂節策劃,其中美國史密森學會暨博物館和阿迦漢(Aga Khan)文化基金邀請她主持一系列音樂研究項目。她創立的音樂項目《吳蠻回到東方》包括"吳蠻和新疆維吾爾音樂大師"、"吳蠻與彈撥樂家"、"古韻——多媒體音樂會"、"吳蠻與台灣原住民朋友"和最新的"中國與南美對話——吳蠻與墨西哥音樂家"。

此外,吳蠻還是享譽國際的大提琴家馬友友《絲路音樂計劃》中重要的創始成員,她在東西方音樂合作中"尋找音樂的共同根源,開創新的音樂語言"。吳蠻精緻而精彩的跨界演出被國際音樂界視為《絲路音樂計劃》中寶貴的資產。西方媒體盛贊吳蠻："沒有她,‘絲路計劃’將是一條褪了色的絲帶。" 近年來,她開始嘗試作曲,多首作品收入於絲路樂團專輯中,由索尼唱片出版。她還擔任了哈佛大學邦廷研究院音樂評委、全美作曲家基金會評委、美國阿肯色州立大學亞洲與中東早期音樂研究中心特聘客座教授、紐約卡內基音樂廳中國音樂顧問委員、費城室內樂團董事會顧問和加拿大格倫・古爾德音樂基金會評審委員,以及她少兒時代的母校浙江藝術職業學院和新建的浙江音樂學院特聘教授,母校中央音樂學院客座教授。她以傑出的藝術成就和突出的貢獻榮獲重要的"美國藝術家"大獎,並被西方媒體與大眾公認為"中國音樂的使者"。


Hsin-Yun Huang 黃心芸, viola
http://hsinyunhuang.com Biography

Hsin-Yun Huang has forged a career as one of the leading violists of her generation, performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Ms. Huang has been soloist with the Berlin Radio Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Bogotá Philharmonic, the NCPA Orchestra in Beijing, Zagreb Soloists, International Contemporary Ensemble, the London Sinfonia, and the Brazil Youth Orchestra, and has performed the complete Hindemith viola concertos with the Taipei City Symphony. She is a regular presence at festivals including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Rome, Spoleto USA, Moritzburg, Menlo, and the Seoul Spring Festival, among many others. She tours extensively with the Brentano String Quartet, most notably including performances of the complete Mozart string quintets at Carnegie Hall.

Highlights of the 2017-18 season include concerto performances under the batons of David Robertson, Osmo Vänskä, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdés in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogota, and appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She is also the first solo violist to be presented in the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing, performing there under the baton of Xian Zhang. Highlights of 2016-2017 included appearances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the 92nd Street Y, Chamber Music Columbus, and the Seoul Spring Festival. The 2014-2015 season featured a series of three chamber concerts curated by Ms. Huang and presented by the 92nd Street Y.

Ms. Huang has in recent years embarked on a series of major commissioning projects for solo viola and chamber ensemble. To date, these works include compositions from Shih-Hui Chen (Shu Shon Key, which Ms. Chen also arranged for orchestra) and Steven Mackey (Groundswell), which premiered at the Aspen Festival. Ms. Huang’s 2012 recording, titled "Viola Viola, " for Bridge Records, included those works along with compositions by Elliott Carter, Poul Ruders, and George Benjamin; the CD has won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her next recording will be the complete Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach, in partnership her husband, violist Misha Amory, to be released by Bridge Records in 2017.

A native of Taiwan and an alumna of Young Concert Artists, Ms. Huang received degrees from The Juilliard School and The Curtis Institute of Music. She now serves on the faculties of both schools and has given master classes at the Guildhall School in London, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the San Francisco Conservatory, Yong Sie Tow Conservatory in Singapore, and the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University. She served on the jury of the 2011 Banff International String Quartet Competition.

Ms. Huang first came to international attention as the gold medalist and the youngest competitor in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. In 1993 she was the top prize winner in the ARD International Competition in Munich, and was awarded the highly prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. Ms. Huang was a member of the Borromeo String Quartet from 1994 to 2000.

She is currently on the Viola Faculty at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music, is married to Misha Amory, violist of the Brentano String Quartet. They live in New York City and have two children Lucas and Leah. She plays on a 1735 Testore Viola.

[May 2018]