Wu Wei

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.

In China, the sheng, a mouth organ, formed out of a bundle of bamboo reeds and cased in a metal bowl, is supposed to sound like the song of the singing phoenix from the 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 collaborate 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 in minimal or baroque music performances.

Wu Wei’s desire to experiment and his capacity to find new sounds and types of musical expression are reflected in his collaborations with distinguished composers writing concertos for Sheng and orchestra especially for him: Huang Ruo (The color 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), Donghoon Shin (Anecdote – 2019, Double Act - 2022), Enjott Schneider (Changes – 2003), Man Fang (Song of the Flaming Phoenix – 2022), Rolf Wallin (Five Seasons – 2022) and several other concertos.

In the symphonic repertoire, Wu Wei has been invited by orchestras such as Berlin Philharmonic under Kent Nagano, Seoul Philharmonic under Myung Whun Chung, Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, BBC Symphony under Ilan Volkov, Cabrillo Festival under Marin Alsop, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic under Susanna Mälkki, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden and Edo de Waart, Helsinki Philharmonic and Ensemble intercontemporain under Matthias Pintscher, San Francisco Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sao Paulo Orchestra under Thierry Fischer, Minnesota Symphony Orchestra under Dima Slobodeniouk and ensembles such as Holland Baroque, Atlas Ensemble, Taipei and Kaohsiung Chinese Orchestras in Taiwan, NDR Big Band, and soloists like Guus Jansen (organ), Wang Li (Jew’s harp) or Pascal Contet (accordion).

Wu Wei is regularly performing at international festivals such as the BBC Proms in London, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Edinburgh International Festival, Suntory Hall Summer Festival Tokyo, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Festival Achtbrücken Köln, Grafenegg Festival, Lincoln Center Festival New York, and Tongyeong Music Festival and recently at the Lucerne Festival and Musikfest Berlin.

His projects include a residency in 2025/2026 at the NCPA in Beijing with the NCPA Orchestra, the premiere of Philippe Leroux’s new concert for sheng, ensemble and electronics at the Festival Manifeste 2027 in Paris with Ensemble intercontemporain and IRCAM.

As a composer, Wu Wei 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) and Janne Saksala (double bass), both members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he is a member of 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. For the Morgenland Festival, he forms with the jazz trumpeter Ingolf Burkhart and pianist Florian Weber, the Trio Silk Blues. He is an ideal partner for interdisciplinary projects involving literature, dance, theatre, architecture….

Wu Wei’s CD recordings can be found under the Deutsche Gramophon, Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi, Wergo and Pentatone labels. Several of them 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” and in 2015 for his WERGO CD “John Cage – Two3” 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 Shanghai. 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 currently living. Since 2013, Wu Wei has been a Professor teaching the Sheng at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.