Wu Tong modernised Chinese instrument the sheng; now he’s turning clock back
The multi-talented musician, who will perform alongside Yo-Yo Ma as part of the HK Phil’s season opening concert, is on a quest to discover how the wind instrument was played in imperial China
Vocalist Wu Tong was kicked out of Lunhui, the rock band he co-founded, because his bandmates thought he was spending too much time on a pet project – making the world’s first electric version of the sheng. That was in 2004, when he worked with Siemens to modernise the traditional Chinese instrument.
Today, the all-round musical genius is more likely to be found raking through archives to discover how the ancient Chinese played the sheng, an instrument his family has long been associated with. He will be channelling some of that when he performs with Yo-Yo Ma and the Hong Kong Philharmonicon September 9 and 10. Yo-Yo Ma on the joys of opening the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s new season
The sheng is a wind instrument that looks like a small bundle of bamboo, and traditionally, that’s exactly what it is: bamboo pipes sitting in a gourd base, played by blowing through a mouthpiece with a free reed.
A version of it was first recorded in the Shang dynasty over 3,000 years ago and it is considered the ancestor of the harmonica, the pipe organ and the accordion, as well as other instruments based on similar mechanisms.
Wu is the fourth generation of his family that has been making shengs for more than 100 years.
