The artistry of internationally, renowned Sheng virtuoso Wu Wei reaches far beyond the traditional boundaries of his more than 3000-year-old Chinese instrument and brings it well into the 21st century.
The Sheng, a mouth organ, formed out of a bundle of bamboo reeds and cased in a metal bowl, sounds as the singing phoenix from a Chinese legend: silvery and fleeting as the wind.
Wu Wei’s radiant and transparent tone as well as the infinite possibilities offered by his instrument in terms of melody, harmony, rhythm, polyphony have led him to collaborating with many artists and ensembles in traditional, chamber or orchestral settings, improvising in solo concerts or with jazz big Bands, playing electronic music as well as taking part to minimal, baroque music performances.
Wu Wei’s desire to experiment with new sound and types of musical expression and his extraordinary capacity to create an individual world out of each performance are reflected in his collaborations with distinguished composers writing concertos for Sheng and orchestra especially for him: Huang Ruo (The color of yellow – 2007), Guus Janssen (Four Songs – 2008), Unsuk Chin (Su – 2009), Jukka Tiensuu (Teoton – 2015), Bernd Richard Deutsch (Phaenomena – 2019), Ondrej Adamek (Lost Prayer Book – 2019), Donghong Shin (Anecdote – 2019), Enjott Schneider (change – 2003 and several other concerti).
In the last decade, Wu Wei has performed with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic under Kent Nagano, the Seoul Philharmonic under Myung Whun Chung, the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, BBC Symphony under Ilan Volkov, the Cabrillo Festival and Sao Paulo Symphony under Marin Alsop, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic under Susanna Mälkki, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden and Edo de Waart, Helsinki Philharmonic under Matthias Pintscher, ensembles such as the Holland Baroque, the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Atlas Ensemble and the NDR Big Band, and soloists like Guus Jansen (organ), Wang Li (Jew’s harp) or Pascal Contet (accordion).
He is regularly invited by international festivals such as the BBC Prom’s in London, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Edinburgh International Festival, Suntory Hall Summer Festival Tokyo, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Festival Achtbrücken Cologne, Grafenegg Festival, Lincoln Center Festival New York…
Upcoming events include Wu Wei’s debuts with the New York Philharmonic and Sao Paulo Symphony orchestra in 2019, the Chinese premiere in Beijing of Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Sheng concerto Phaenomena with the China NCPA Orchestra under Jia Lü, the world premiere of a new Sheng concerto by Enjott Schneider with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra and a tour to America and Canada with the Chinese NCPA Orchestra in 2020.
As a composer, Wu Wei has received commissions from the Fondation Royaumont, Musica Viva in Munich, the Hanse Culture Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and several other institutions.
With Martin Stegner (viola) und Matthew McDonald (double bass), both members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he founded the Wu Wei Trio which appears each season in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie. As a founder of the Berlin based Ensemble Asianart, he likes to share transcultural programs with instrumentalists from all around the world. He is an ideal partner for interdisciplinary projects involving literature, dance, theatre, architecture….
Wu Wei has recorded for Deutsche Gramophon, Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi, Wergo, Pentatone and several of his CDs and DVDs have been distinguished by international Awards: International Classical Music Award 2015 and BBC Music Magazine Award 2015 for the Unsuk Chin concertos CD with Deutsche Gramophon, the German Critic Award in 2012 for the “AsianArt Ensemble” CD to note a few.
He also received the Best Sheng Soloist Award China in 2017, the Herald Angels Award 2011 at the International Festival Edinburgh, the Global Root German World Music Prize 2004 in Rudolstadt (Germany).
Wu Wei was born in 1970 in Gaoyou (China). He studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and started his career in 1993 as a Sheng soloist in China where he performed among others with the Chinese Music Orchestra Shanghaï. In 1995, he was selected by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and FNS (Friedrich Naumann Foundation) to take part in a four-year scholarship which brought him to Berlin, where he is still currently living. Since 2013, Wu Wei has been a Professor teaching the Sheng at the Shanghaï Conservatory of Music.