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Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Verona Quartet with Wu Man (Feb. 25)

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by Mike Telin

If you are familiar with the Pipa — a Chinese lute-like instrument with a history that dates back more than 2,000 years — chances are that you first heard it played by Wu Man.

On February 25 in Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall, the world’s premiere pipa virtuoso joined the Verona Quartet — Jonathan and Dorothy Ro (violins), Abigail Rojansky (viola), and Jonathan Dormand (cello) — for a program that traveled the musical globe to explore the question, What is home? The concert was presented as part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.

Throughout the evening, the large audience was treated to a musical collaboration that never felt forced. As always, Wu Man’s innate sense of musicality proved that great virtuosity is not always about fast technical passages, it can also be found in the nuances of serenity. And the Verona, Oberlin’s Quartet-in-Residence, were unified partners, producing musically intelligent and technically flawless playing that seamlessly moved in and out of a spectrum of colors and stylistic emotions.

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Trail Blazing Musician Wu Man in Residence at Oberlin

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by Cathy Partlow Strauss

This article is posted with the permission of the author and Oberlin Conservatory

The pipa is not an instrument on which students at Oberlin Conservatory perform, but the lute-like instrument developed in China more than 2000 years ago is influencing increasingly more concert music found on stages throughout the world.

This is due in large part to the artist Wu Man, recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and a leading ambassador of Chinese music. She’ll be in residence at Oberlin February 24-25 and take part in three events across campus that culminate in a concert with Oberlin College quartet-in-residence, the Verona Quartet. All events are free and open to the public.

Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer, giving the pipa a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. The creative projects she has initiated have resulted in the instrument finding a place in numerous musical settings and genres, as well as in collaborations in theater productions, film, dance, and with visual artists.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man was an early trailblazer. She was hailed as a child prodigy at age 13 and went on to earn the first master’s degree in pipa the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She moved to the U.S. in 1990 and was awarded a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard Radcliffe in 1998.

Since then, she has performed as a soloist with many of the world’s major orchestras and is the leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music written by composers including Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Tan Dun, and Bright Sheng.

Her notable career has also been marked by several “firsts.” She was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive the United States Artist Fellowship and the first artist from China to perform at the White House. In 2013, she was named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year.

She is a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble and is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as the Kronos and Shanghai Quartets.

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Wu Man and Huayin Shadow Puppet Band at CMA (Mar. 21)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Wu-Man

“There are more things in heaven and earth,” Shakespeare wrote in the voice of the iconic character Hamlet, “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The line has supernatural overtones in context, but the essential message — that the staggering variety and abundance of the world defies comprehension — applies just as well to human cultural production. As Wu Man and the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band demonstrated last week at the Cleveland Museum of Art, even the traditional music of a single country can yield practices and sounds that seem universes, rather than mere miles or years, apart.

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Pipa virtuoso Wu Man and the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band to visit Cleveland Museum of Art

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Wu-ManDeep in the Huayin County in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, in a rural village at the foot of Mount Hua — it was there that pipa player Wu Man first heard the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, a family of farmers with an artistic tradition over 300 years old, passed down through generations.

On Wednesday, March 21 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, Wu Man will combine her virtuosity on the pipa with the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band’s unique blend of sounds — shouting vocals, lutes, fiddles, traditional instruments like the yueqin, banhu, and erhu, clappers, small and large gongs, and the battering of a wooden bench. Together they’ll sing and play about life in remote China through old-tune traditional music with shadow puppetry.

Wu Man described the music of the Shaanxi Province as a far cry from the elegant, urban, tea-house style that is popular where she grew up, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, near Shanghai.

[Read more…]

Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble at Blossom Music Center (August 13)

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by Alexandra Vago

Silk-Road-EnsembleBad weather was no deterrent for concertgoers at the Blossom Music Center on Saturday, August 13. The audience in a nearly-packed pavilion and on an umbrella-laden lawn gave The Silk Road Ensemble two standing ovations, one at intermission and one at the conclusion of their stellar performance. [Read more…]

Looking forward to the summer season: a conversation with Cleveland Orchestra artistic administrator Ilya Gidalevich

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by Mike Telin

Blossom-Lawn-071115Now that summer is officially upon us, it’s time to locate the picnic basket, fill it with your favorite summer foods, and head to the Cuyahoga National Park with family and friends to enjoy a Cleveland Orchestra concert at Blossom Music Center. And, if anyone in your vehicle is under the age of 18, their seat on the lawn is free.

If you can’t make it to Blossom, the Orchestra has scheduled three early Friday evening concerts in its Summers@Severance series. Special “happy hour” drink prices will be offered one hour prior to each concert on Severance Hall’s front terrace. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early and enjoy the outdoor delights of University Circle.

“As usual the summer season is a mix of musical genres and artists,” Cleveland Orchestra artistic administrator Ilya Gidalevich said during a recent telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art: a conversation with pipa virtuoso Wu Man

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by Mike Telin

Wu-ManThe Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series continues on Wednesday, April 8th at 7:30 pm with a concert by pipa virtuoso Wu Man in Gartner Auditorium. “I’m sure that people who are coming to the concert are prepared to listen to something they are not familiar with,” Wu Man said during a telephone conversation from Knoxville, Tennessee, where she was performing at the Big Ears Festival along with her longtime collaborators, the Kronos Quartet.

Wu Man’s most recent Northeast Ohio performance was in January, when she performed Zhao Jiping’s Pipa Concerto No. 2 (2013) with the Canton Symphony Orchestra. Her concert at the museum will feature another 21st-century work, Ancient Dances, a three-movement piece by Chen Yi for pipa, percussion, and video, combined with Chinese calligraphy. “Ancient Dances will make up the second half of the program. The first half will highlight traditional pipa repertoire and some of my own compositions and improvisations,” Wu Man explained. “I will also include music from the time of the cultural revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s going to be a fun musical journey. During the concert I will talk about the different musical styles. My hope is that people will leave not only thinking the concert was cool, but also have a greater curiosity about other cultures.” [Read more…]

A Rhapsodic Fusion of East and West from the Canton Symphony Orchestra (January 24)

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by Tom Wachunas

Wu-ManExiting Umstattd Hall after the January 24 “East Meets West” MasterWorks concert by the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO), I briefly noticed wide-eyed wonder on the face of a woman just ahead of me as she looked at her companion. I heard her gush, “Oh, those strings, those glorious strings! I had no idea!” And I thought to myself ah ha… another convert. [Read more…]

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