Wu Man, Kojiro Umezaki

Wu Man, Kojiro Umezaki

About Wu Man, Kojiro Umezaki

Wu Man (pipa) and Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi) released the album Flow in late 2020. Wu Man (Chinese: 吴蛮; born 1963 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China) is a Chinese pipa and ruan player and composer. She is an exponent of the Pudong School of pipa playing. She studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where her instructors included Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai. She became the first recipient of a master's degree in pipa and won the first prize in the 1989 National Music Performance Competition. Although educated in China, Wu came to the United States in 1990 at the age of 25. She lived in Boston for many years and now lives in San Diego, California with her husband and son. Wu performs with Chinese traditional music groups but is also known for her interpretation of contemporary compositions, as well as her work in jazz and cross-cultural music. Many composers (including Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bun-Ching Lam, and others) have composed new works for her. Wu has performed and recorded with the Kronos Quartet, Henry Threadgill, and Yo-Yo Ma's The Silk Road Ensemble. In 1999, she became the first Chinese musician to play at the White House. She played there, together with Yo-Yo Ma, in honor of Zhu Rongji, the prime minister of China. Also in 1999, Wu was chosen by Ma to receive the Glenn Gould Prize. Kojiro Umezaki grew up in Tokyo, Japan where he began studying Western flute and the shakuhachi. His career encompasses both traditional and technology-based music and a range of electronic media. “My mother is from Denmark and my father is Japanese. My multinational background may be one of the reasons why I don’t limit myself to the traditional repertoire. In all my work, I try to put the shakuhachi in a more contemporary, musically diverse context. Hopefully this work can become part of the evolutionary process of the instrument.” Ko is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine where he is affiliated with the Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology group (ICIT) and holds a degree in Electro-acoustic Music from Dartmouth College. Recent commissioned works and producer credits include those for Brooklyn Rider (2009), Joseph Gramley (2009, 2010), Huun Huur Tu (2010), and the Silk Road Ensemble (2012). He performs regularly with the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble and has recorded on the Sony BMG, World Village, and Smithsonian Folkways labels.

Taken from Last.fm

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