Wu Man to launch semester's Filene Series with pipa concert

Pipa player Wu Man will perform traditional Chinese music during an upcoming concert at Skidmore, but she’ll also mix the sounds of her ancient instrument with American folk music, performing with banjo player Lee Knight.

Wu and Knight will perform at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, in Filene Recital Hall. Admission to the public event is $5, or $2 for seniors and students.

A lute-like instrument with a history of more than 2,000 years, the pipa has a heavy, pear-shaped wood body and a fretted neck. The pipa’s four strings are played with a variety of both left- and right-hand fingering techniques, and its name is derived from the sound of plucking both forward and backward: “pi” and “pa” in Chinese.

Wu’s appearance at the College is the first in the semester’s Filene Concert Series. She was invited by Lei Ouyang Bryant, a visiting assistant professor at Skidmore, who is teaching classes in ethnomusicology that examine music and culture from East Asia and China. Bryant chose Wu Man for the Filene Residency because of her abilities to address cultural history and tradition, and also contemporary and cross-cultural music.

“She was my first choice as a guest artist, and I was thrilled when I learned she could come,” Bryant said, noting Wu’s wide range of styles and repertoire. “The pipa is a captivating instrument, and Wu Man is an exceptional artist,” she said.

Bryant also is pleased that Wu will be showing the cross-cultural capabilities of the pipa, performing with Knight. While the combination sounds unusual, it works well, according to the musicians.

Wu says it’s important that she gives the audience some knowledge of traditional Chinese music, but that she doesn’t want her performance to be formal.

“I want people to have fun and to enjoy the night,” she explained.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu began studying the pipa at age nine. “My parents chose it for me,” she says, explaining that while child-sized student model pipas are now sold, at the time she took up the instrument there was just one size.

“For two years I practiced only the right hand,” she recalls. Her left arm wasn’t long enough to reach the proper position on her pipa’s neck. Her practicing paid off, and she went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, eventually becoming the first student to earn a master’s degree in pipa performance.

Wu says the pipa has always been the most popular traditional instrument in China, and that sharing its sound and ancient repertoire are important.

Cited by The Los Angeles Times as “the artist most responsible for bringing the pipa to the Western World,” Wu is known for collaborations with some of today’s most distinguished musicians and conductors, including Yo-Yo Ma, Cho-liang Lin, Christoph Eschenbach, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, Philip Glass, and the Kronos Quartet. She recently collaborated with composer Chen Yi on Ancient Dances, which explores the inner relationship between artistic forms of pipa music, calligraphy, and poetry of the Tang Dynasty.

She is a principal member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, and frequently performs with the world-famous cellist. She also has performed and recorded music in a variety of distinctly non-Asian-sounding styles, including the traditional American folk music she will perform at Skidmore with Knight.

Knight performed at Carnegie Hall with Wu Man and recorded together with her and others in Wu Man and Friends (2005, Traditional Crossroads).

Steeped in the Appalachian tradition of folk music, Knight grew up in the Adirondacks. In addition to the five-string banjo, he is a folk singer and storyteller, and plays various guitars, the Appalachian dulcimer, the mouth bow, the Cherokee flute and the Cherokee rattle, as well as the Native American drum.

He lives in North Carolina, where he appears regularly at the Asheville Mountain Dance and Folk Song Festival and the Lake Junaluska Folk Festival.