Performance: Shanghai Quartet

The Freer Sackler Museums of Asian Art host a performance by the Shanghai Quartet featuring Wu Man.

The two-time Grammy-nominated Wu Man performs on solo pipa (Chinese lute). She joins the great Shanghai Quartet for Tan Dun’s seminal Ghost Opera (chamber version), Yi-wen Jiang’s Folksong Suite, and the Washington premiere of Red Lantern by Zhao Jiping and Zhao Lin.

To complete this all-Chinese program, the Shanghai adds Bright Sheng’s Quartet no. 4, “Silent Temple,” which was co-commissioned by the Freer?Sackler in 2000 and is dedicated to the Shanghai Quartet. Wu and the Shanghai are taking this collaboration to twelve North American cities this season, with a finale at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

Wu was named Instrumentalist of the Year in 2013 by Musical America. She is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and artist-in-residence with the Kronos Quartet this season. Strings magazine has praised the Shanghai Quartet for “32 years of carrying the torch of rigorous musical integrity and profound commitment to playing music as if it was always being created anew.”

Presented jointly by the Freer Sackler and the Smithsonian Associates.

Tickets are $15 each and can be purchased beginning at 9 am on February 1 through SmithsonianAssociates.org, at 202.633.3030, or at the Ripley Center (1100 Jefferson Drive SW, Suite 3077). A $2 non-refundable fee is applied for all tickets, plus an additional $3 non-refundable handling fee per order for charges by phone.