Concerts also feature Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances
April 6 performance webcast for free at dso.org, YouTube, and via Facebook Live as part of DSO’s Live from Orchestra Hall series; April 5 concert broadcast and streamed live on 90.9 WRCJ in Detroit and a network of stations across Michigan
Tickets on sale now at dso.org
Detroit, (March 12, 2024) – The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) will welcome conductor Eric Jacobsen and pipa player Wu Man to Orchestra Hall on April 5–7 for a program on the PVS Classical Series.
Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man will perform the world premiere of a pipa concerto by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun titled Ears of The Book (DSO Co-Commission). The program will also feature Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, concluding a year-long celebration of the composer’s 150th birthday.
Du Yun’s Ears of the Book Concerto for Pipa and Orchestra is co-commissioned by the DSO in partnership with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Carnegie Hall, and in collaboration with The Knights, a New York–based orchestral collective founded by brothers Eric and Colin Jacobsen. This co-commission is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Debussy & Rachmaninoff will take place Friday, April 5 at 10:45 a.m., Saturday, April 6 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, April 7 at 3 p.m. in Orchestra Hall. The April 6 performance will be webcast for free at dso.org, YouTube, and via Facebook Live as part of the DSO’s Live from Orchestra Hall series. The April 5 concert will be broadcast and streamed live on 90.9 WRCJ in Detroit and a network of stations across Michigan.
Tickets for these performances start at $19 and can be purchased at dso.org or by calling the Box Office at 313.576.5111, open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The title sponsor of the DSO’s Classical Series is PVS Chemicals, Inc. DSO Live is presented by Ford Motor Company Fund. Technology support comes from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Digital programming is produced from the Al Glancy Control Room.
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DEBUSSY & RACHMANINOFF
PVS Classical Series
Friday, April 5 at 10:45 a.m.
Saturday, April 6 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 7 at 3 p.m.
Orchestra Hall
Eric Jacobsen, conductor
Wu Man, pipa
Known as the best in the world on her instrument (pipa), Wu Man plays new music by Pulitzer Prize–winner Du Yun, herself celebrated as a "groundbreaking artist" (The New York Times). Debussy’s Prelude, with its dreamy flute solo, evokes longing and desire. Our celebration of Rachmaninoff at 150 ends with his last work for orchestra, a powerful, heart-pounding ride.
CLAUDE DEBUSSY Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun
DU YUN Ears of the Book Pipa Concerto (Co-Commission)
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
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About Eric Jacobsen
Already well-established as one of classical music’s most exciting and innovative young conductors, Eric Jacobsen combines fresh interpretations of the traditional canon with cutting-edge collaborations across musical genres. Hailed by The New York Times as “an interpretive dynamo,” Jacobsen, as both a conductor and a cellist, has built a reputation for engaging audiences with innovative and collaborative programming.
Jacobsen joined the Virginia Symphony Orchestra as Music Director in 2021, being named the twelfth music director in the orchestra’s 100+ year history. Current projects include recording projects of Dvořák and Coleridge-Taylor with Gil Shaham and Rhapsody in Blue (on banjo!) with Béla Fleck.
Jacobsen is in his ninth season as Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, as he continues to pioneer the orchestra’s programming and community engagement in new and exciting directions. The 2023–2024 season looks forward to the return of the Resonate Festival, a unique blend of old and new orchestral and chamber works, performed in standard and more intimate concert formats.
Jacobsen is also the Artistic Director and co-founder of The Knights, the uniquely adventurous NYC-based chamber orchestra. The ensemble, founded with his brother, violinist Colin Jacobsen, grew out of late-night music reading parties with friends, good food and drink, and conversation. Current projects include a multi-year Rhapsody project as well as a residency at Carnegie Hall. Under Jacobsen’s baton, The Knights have developed an extensive recording collection, which includes the critically acclaimed albums Azul, with longtime collaborator Yo-Yo Ma, as well as a recent album featuring Gil Shaham in performances of the Beethoven and Brahms Violin Concertos.
A frequent guest conductor, Jacobsen has established continuing relationships with the Colorado Symphony, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. Recent engagements also include concerts with the Omaha Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, and the Grant Park Music Festival.
Jacobsen brings joy, storytelling, and a touch of humor to what he describes as “musical conversations” that delight audiences around the world, including those who do not traditionally attend classical music concerts. Jacobsen is married to Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan and together they have a daughter, Ivy Jo.
About Wu Man
Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her lute-like instrument—which has a history of over 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Through numerous concert tours she has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions. Her adventurous spirit and virtuosity have led to collaborations across artistic disciplines, allowing her to reach wider audiences as she works to cross cultural and musical borders. Her efforts were recognized when she was named Musical America’s 2013 “Instrumentalist of the Year,” marking the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed on a player of a non-Western instrument, and in 2021 when she received an Honorary Doctorate from the New England Conservatory of Music.
Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Wu Man is now recognized as an outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire as well as a leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music by today’s most prominent composers such as Tan Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, and many others. She was the recipient of The Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998 and was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive the United States Artist Fellowship in 2008. She is also the first artist from China to perform at the White House. Wu Man is a Visiting Professor at her alma mater, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and a Distinguished Professor at the Zhejiang and the Xi’an Conservatories. She has also served as Artistic Director of the Xi’an Silk Road Music Festival at the Xi’an Conservatory.
Wu Man has performed as a soloist with many of the world’s major orchestras including the Austrian ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Moscow Soloists, the Nashville Symphony, the German NDR and RSO Radio Symphony Orchestras, the New Music Group, the New York Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Her touring has taken her to the major music halls of the world including Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Great Hall in Moscow, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Opera Bastille, the Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls in London, and the Theatre de la Ville in Paris. She has performed at many international festivals including the Auckland Arts Festival, Bang on a Can Festival, BBC Proms, Festival d’Automne in Paris, Festival de Radio France et Montpellier, Hong Kong Arts Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Lincoln Center Festival, Luminato, Mozart Festival in Vienna, NextWave! / BAM, Ravinia Festival, Silk Road Festival, Sydney Festival, Tanglewood, Wien Modern, WOMAD Festival, and the Yatsugatake Kogen Festival in Japan. She continually collaborates with some of the most distinguished musicians and conductors performing today, such as Yuri Bashmet, Dennis Russell Davies, Christoph Eschenbach, Gunther Herbig, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and David Zinman.
Among Wu Man’s most fruitful collaborations is with the Kronos Quartet, with whom she began collaborating in the early 1990s. They premiered their first project together, Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1995. The work was recorded and released on Nonesuch in 1997. Additional Kronos Quartet recordings featuring Wu Man for Nonesuch include Early Music, on which she plays the zhong ruan and da ruan (string instruments related to the pipa) in John Dowland’s Lachrymæ Antiquæ and the Grammy Award-nominated You’ve Stolen My Heart, an homage to the composer of classic Bollywood songs Rahul Dev Burman, featuring Wu Man alongside the Quartet, singer Asha Bhosle, and tabla player Zakir Hussain. She participated in the quartet’s 40th anniversary celebration concerts at Cal Performances in Berkeley, California and at Carnegie Hall; was an Artist-in-Residence with the quartet in February 2016; became the second inductee into the “Kronos Hall of Fame” (joining Terry Riley); and composed her first piece for western instruments, Four Chinese Paintings, for the quartet’s “50 for the Future” project. Last season in Washington, DC, she and the quartet reprised their multimedia work A Chinese Home, conceived in collaboration with theater director Chen Shi-Zheng and premiered at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in 2009.
As a principal, founding musician in the Silkroad project, founded by Yo-Yo Ma, Wu Man has performed throughout the US, Europe, and Asia with the Silkroad Ensemble. She is a featured artist in the documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble, as well as on the film’s 2017 Grammy Award-winning companion recording, Sing Me Home (“Best World Music Album”), which includes her original composition Green (Vincent’s Tune) performed with the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. She has recorded six albums with the group: Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet (2002), Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon (2005), New Impossibilities (2007), the CD/DVD A Playlist Without Borders/Live from Tanglewood (2013), and Sing Me Home (2016) on Sony Classical, as well as Off the Map (2009) on World Village. Her Silkroad Ensemble performances in recent years have included tours of the US during the season and to summer festivals such as Tanglewood, Wolf Trap, Blossom, Ravinia, and Hollywood Bowl; a tour of Asia; and performances with the Mark Morris Dance Group in Berkeley and Seattle. During the 2019–2020 season, she and the ensemble toured the eastern US for the world premiere performances of resident composer Osvaldo Golijov’s song cycle Falling Out of Time.
Adamant that the pipa does not become marginalized as only appropriate for Chinese music, Wu Man strives to develop a place for the pipa in all art forms. Projects she has initiated have resulted in the pipa finding a place in new solo and quartet works, concertos, opera, chamber, electronic, and jazz music, as well as in theater productions, film, dance, and collaborations with visual artists including calligraphers and painters. Her role has developed beyond pipa performance to encompass singing, dancing, composing, and curating new works. She has premiered works by Chinese composers including Zhao Jiping, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, and Chen Yi. Other notable projects include Orion: China, co-written with Philip Glass for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and recorded the following year; and Blue and Green, an original composition that she premiered with The Knights. In March 2019 Wu Man and Yo-Yo Ma performed the American premiere of Zhao Lin’s A Happy Excursion with the New York Philharmonic. Recent projects have seen her rediscover, embrace, and showcase the musical traditions of her homeland, projects she has dubbed “Wu Man’s Return to the East.” In 2009, she was asked to curate two concerts at Carnegie Hall as part of the “Ancient Paths, Modern Voices” festival celebrating Chinese culture. Wu Man and the artists she brought to New York from rural China for the festival also took part in two free neighborhood concerts and a concert presented by the Orange County Performing Arts Society in Costa Mesa. In August 2012, she released a documentary DVD titled Discovering a Musical Heartland: Wu Man’s Return to China as part of her ongoing “Return to the East” project. In the film, she travels to little-explored regions of China to uncover ancient musical traditions that have rarely been documented before. Among the musicians she met on her journey were the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, which she brought to the US for the first time—touring 11 cities around the nation. She has also toured around the world as a Master Musician in the Aga Khan Music Initiative—a group of performers, composer-arrangers, teachers, and curators who create music inspired by their cultural heritage of the Middle East, South and Central Asia, West Africa, and China.
Wu Man boasts a discography of over 40 albums including the Grammy Award-winning Sing Me Home (“Best World Music Album”) with the Silkroad Ensemble on Sony; the Grammy Award-nominated Our World in Song, featuring familiar folk songs from around the world arranged by her with Hawaiian instrumentalist Daniel Ho and Cuban percussionist Luis Conte; and Elegant Pipa Classics, which combines traditional pipa repertoire with modern compositions, both released by Wind Music. Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago features her Grammy Award-nominated performance of Lou Harrison’s Pipa Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as a Grammy-nominated recording of Tan Dun’s Pipa Concerto with Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists on Onyx Classics. In May 2012, she released her Independent Music Award-nominated CD/DVD Borderlands, which traces the history of the pipa in China. It is the final installment of the acclaimed ten-volume “Music of Central Asia” ethnographic series produced by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In Wu Man and Friends, released on Traditional Crossroads in 2005, she blends Chinese, Ukrainian, Ugandan, and Appalachian traditional music, performing alongside musicians from these regions. Her solo recordings include Pipa: From a Distance, released on Naxos World Music in 2003, and Immeasurable Light, released on Traditional Crossroads in 2010. Fingertip Carnival, her latest release for Wind Music, explores the connections between Chinese and Mexican folk music and each culture’s use of stringed instruments with the San Diego-based son jarocho group Son de San Diego. Her most recent recordings have seen her pair the pipa with traditional wind instruments: with the Japanese shakuhachi on Flow with Kojiro Umezaki released on In A Circle Records; and with the Chinese sheng on Distant Mountains with Wu Wei recorded live at the 2018 Morgenland Festival Osnabrueck and released by Dreyer Gaido.
Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man studied with Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. Accepted into the conservatory at age 13, her audition was covered by national newspapers, and she was hailed as a child prodigy, becoming a nationally recognized role model for young pipa players. She subsequently received first prize in the First National Music Performance Competition among many other awards, and she participated in many premieres of works by a new generation of Chinese composers. Her first exposure to Western classical music came in 1979 when she saw Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing in Beijing. In 1980 she participated in an open master class with violinist Isaac Stern, and in 1985 she made her first visit to the US as a member of the China Youth Arts Troupe. She moved to the US in 1990 and was awarded the Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998. She was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive the United States Artist Fellowship (2008) and the first artist from China to perform at the White House. She currently resides in California.
About Du Yun
Du Yun, born and raised in Shanghai, China, and currently based in New York City, works at the intersection of opera, orchestral, theatre, cabaret, musical, oral tradition, public performances, electronics, visual arts, and noise. Her body of work is championed by some of today’s finest performing groups and organizations around the world.
Known for her “relentless originality and unflinching social conscience” (The New Yorker), Yun’s second opera, Angel’s Bone (libretto by Royce Vavrek), won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music. She was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Composition category for her work Air Glow. Her collaborative opera Sweet Land with Raven Chacon (for opera company The Industry) was the 2021 Best New Opera by the North America Critics Association. Four of her feature studio albums were named The New Yorker’s Notable Recordings of the Year in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, respectively.
A community champion, Yun was a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble; served as the Artistic Director of MATA Festival (2014–2018); conceived the Pan Asia Sounding Festival (National Sawdust); and founded FutureTradition, a global initiative that illuminates the provenance lineages of folk art and uses these structures to build cross-regional collaborations from the ground up. Yun was named one of 38 Great Immigrants by the Carnegie Foundation (2018), and “Artist of the Year” by the Beijing Music Festival (2019). In 2022, she was granted a Creative Capital Award for an AR inter-generational Kun-opera project. Asia Society Hong Kong has honored her for her continued contribution in the performing arts field. Other notable awards include awards from the Guggenheim, American Academy Berlin Prize, Fromm Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
As an avid performer and bandleader (Ok Miss), her onstage persona has been described by The New York Times as “an indie pop diva with an avant-garde edge.”
Yun is a Professor of Composition at the Peabody Institute and the Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Her concert music is published worldwide by G. Schirmer.
About the DSO
The acclaimed Detroit Symphony Orchestra is known for trailblazing performances, collaborations with the world’s foremost musical artists, and a deep connection to its city. Led by Music Director Jader Bignamini since 2020, the DSO makes its home at historic Orchestra Hall within the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center, offering a performance schedule that features the PVS Classical, PNC Pops, Paradise Jazz, and Young People’s Family Concert series. In addition, the DSO presents the William Davidson Neighborhood Concert Series in metro area venues, as well as eclectic multi-genre performances in its mid-size venue The Cube, constructed and curated with support from Peter D. & Julie F. Cummings. A dedication to broadcast innovation began in 1922, when the DSO became the first orchestra in the world to present a live radio broadcast of a concert and continues today with the groundbreaking Live from Orchestra Hall series of free webcasts.
Since its first school concerts a century ago, and particularly since the founding of the Civic Youth Ensembles in 1970, the DSO has been a national leader in bringing the benefits of music education to students, teachers, and families in Detroit and surrounding communities. The DSO remains committed to expanding its participation in the growth and well-being of Detroit through programs like its Detroit Neighborhood Initiative—cultural events co-created with community partners and residents—and Detroit Harmony, a promise to provide an instrument and instruction to any student in the city who wants to learn. With unwavering support from the people of Detroit, the DSO actively pursues a mission to impact lives through the power of unforgettable musical experiences.