Wu Man featured in The Stories of Our Heritage, a film series celebrating the NEA's National Heritage Fellows

Wu Man is profiled in a short film honoring her as one of nine recipients of a prestigious 2023 National Heritage Fellowship, presented by the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). This beautifully crafted film pays tribute to Wu Man for her work in redefining the centuries-old, pear-shaped, four-stringed Chinese lute and bringing it to new audiences in the United States and around the world.

Since its inception in 1982, the NEA has honored nearly 500 National Heritage Fellows, representing over 200 distinct art forms. Each fellowship includes a $25,000 award for the honoree’s lifetime achievement in practicing and preserving American folk and traditional arts. Visit the NEA’s YouTube channel to watch The Stories of Our Heritage film series and learn more about the 2023 National Heritage Fellows. 

My Music with Rhiannon Giddens returns to PBS

with Wu Man as its first musical guest

In this first episode of the second season of My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, host Rhiannon Giddens performs and talks with pipa master Wu Man – who has been part of Silkroad Ensemble since its founding in 2000 by cellist Yo-Yo Ma – about the origins of the pipa and discuss Silkroad’s multi-year “American Railroad” project. Watch the full episode here.

Wu Man celebrates the 20th Anniversary of Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home at the Peabody Essex Museum

 Photo taken in 2004 at "Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home.

2023 marked the 20th anniversary of Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Originally built in China’s southeastern Huizhou region, Yin Yu Tang translates to “Hall of Plentiful Shelter” and housed the Huang family for over 200 years. In the 1990s, as part of a mutually beneficial cultural exchange, the home and its contents were carefully dismantled and transported to Massachusetts for eventual installation on PEM’s campus.

Wu Man — who visited the house 20 years ago upon its unveiling — returns on May 25 to perform as part of PEM’s year of special programming to mark this landmark anniversary, including concerts, talks, art activities, and tours of Yin Yu Tang.

Wu Man premieres Du Yun’s pipa concerto

Ears of the Book

Wu Man performs Du Yun's Ears of the Book with The Knights led by Eric Jacobsen at Carnegie Hall. Photo by Fadi Kheir.

Earlier this spring, Wu Man premiered an exhilarating new pipa concerto written for her by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun, titled Ears of the Book with The Knights led by Eric Jacobsen at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and the Detroit Symphony also conducted by Jacobsen. 

Watching Wu Man perform the concerto was a visceral experience. The extraordinarily difficult pipa part — notable particularly for its rhythmic complexity and quick tempi — positions Wu Man in the role of narrative storyteller; the literal translation of its Chinese title is “Listen to the story.” The 20-minute work threads through four sections that are performed without pause, each rooted in traditional Chinese regional music styles, including Qin opera from the north, Nanyin from the south, and Peking opera from the central part of China. 

“This concerto has a very different sound and approach to the pipa,” said Wu Man. “It has a free, playful spirit, just like Du Yun’s personality. The challenge for me as the soloist is to figure out how I want to play it; Du Yun said to me that in certain sections, the notes don’t matter as much as the rhythm and gesture.” 

Praise for Ears of the Book

“It is clear that Ears of the Book is not any kind of “East meets West” event or exoticised curio piece. Rather, it is an experimental approach to sound that is pushing the capabilities of a centuries-old instrument. Wu Man hopes that the pipa’s unusual timbres can provoke the audience to listen and live more imaginatively. ‘It’s more than entertainment,’ she says. ‘Something that can change deeply inside of us.’"

— I Care If You Listen

“[Ears of the Book] was essentially a virtuosic pipa concerto with Wu Man as soloist, and a masterfully assembled one. Du Yun’s orchestration was like sonic alchemy. The large string section sustained notes from the pipa, at times even sounding like faint feedback. Metallic percussion, plucked cellos, monumental trills, fanfares and string swells moved quickly in a rigidly controlled cacophony of gentle dissonance and heroic themes through an unbroken 20 minutes."

— Bachtrack

“Ears of the Book is beautifully paced and sonically inventive. The pipa has a couple of extended solos, first with traditional-sounding material to begin the piece, and then accompanied only by harp and percussion about two-thirds of the way through, but is playing nearly the whole time. The orchestra provides atmosphere sometimes, and sometimes climactic sound and fury. Grooves are hinted at, nearly coalesce, and disappear. The sense of narrative motion is irresistible. It's hard to say how much of the credit for that should go to the composer and how much to the soloist; in the end, the fusion of both created an indelible experience. (Ecstasy!)”

— Cadenza NYC

“Enter Wu Man and her pipa. This Chinese plucked lute can also sound at times like a kind of zither, at least in the hands of this virtuoso. For Ears of the Book Du Yun specified an array of techniques, some quite non-traditional, all performed with virtuosity and flair by Wu Man.”

— Blogcritics 

Coming this summer

This summer, Wu Man will be a featured guest at the Kronos Festival, a four day festival celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Kronos Quartet with world premieres, special guests, and much more! On opening night, June 20, Wu Man and the Kronos perform the world premiere of Beyond the Golden Gate, an innovative exploration of how Chinese Americans have shaped our country. The performance will be followed by a moderated conversation between Cantonese Australian vocalist Charmaine Lee and SF-based community activist David Lei.

On August 4, Wu Man performs with the Beijing Youth Symphony Orchestra as part of Carnegie Hall’s World Orchestra Week (WOW!). Conducted by Lü Jia, the BYSO is an ensemble newly created by China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts. Wu Man is the soloist in the New York Premiere of Zhao Jiping’s Pipa Concerto, which was originally written for her.

She also returns to the Edinburgh International Festival on August 20 where she performs a solo set followed by an Ask the Artist event.

Wu Man rounds out the month with the Silkroad Ensemble's Global Musician Workshop held in Boston from August 6-10 and in Hangzhou, China from August 26-31. This will be the workshop's first time being hosted in China thanks to an initiative started by Wu Man, creating the opportunity for musicians from other global regions to participate in performances and professional development.