Wu Fei's Music Daily

Good afternoon and morning, I am back to alive from a week of strep throat torture! If you just got out of a sickness, let’s celebrate it. I recorded this three-track guzheng composition two hours ago. There wasn’t any particular inspiration except feeling good about not being sick again. You can hear my energy from this piece. I used a glass slide, a metal slide and a tuning fork to make a lot of...

Happy Friday everyone, I just composed and recorded this three-track guzheng night song. Yesterday, I had to skip a recording day because my spring allergy was killing me. There was not one minute that I could sit straight up without blowing my nose for an entire day. I got too much back when I was wishing for a warm weather :D Today, I feel much better. Thank you all for your support and patience...

Hi everyone, I composed and recorded this two-track prepared guzheng piece yesterday. There are two elements that inspired me: prepared instrument, and the nine scales from the Yuan Dynasty in China. Prepared instrument (music) refers to experimental music played with a prepared instrument, a musical instrument with objects inserted or attached to alter its sound. In this piece, I stuck two metal...

Happy Friday everyone, I have a lot of videos of home practices, concert footages, and scenes from different places where I have performed. Now Substack is making it really easy to share video, so I will be sharing some of them with you in the coming months. If you are not familiar with the guzheng 古筝, you can see more of how I play and sing at the same time—this is rather rare in the guzheng wo...

Hi everyone, I recorded this solo guzheng improvisation yesterday. Last week, I heard the frogs chirping in the creek close to my house in Nashville. It was a sign of the spring coming. I was excited because I have had enough of the cold weather. However, it is going to get cold again this week and it might even snow. Hope this piece brings you a moment of warm energy into your day! Wu Fei 吴非 Wu...

Happy Friday everyone, I just composed and recorded this three-track guzheng étude in the tempo of 211 BPM (beats per minute). 211 beats per minute is considered crazy fast. It means I play 3.5 beats every second. In the recording, I played 4 notes per beat. Therefore, I played 14 notes per second. Today, there was a lot of strong energy in me that I needed to take out of my head. I was also think...

Happy Lantern Festival 元宵节快乐! I have missed you! My performance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra was mesmerizing. What a high note to kick off the year of the Snake! I want to thank the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, maestra Naomi Woo who conducted all the pieces performed by featured fellow artists Stella Chen, Dashan 大山, and the Yang Yang Dance Studio. A huge thank you to Mayor Olivia Cho...

Hi everyone, Happy Chū wǔ 初五 — the fifth day of the Chinese New Year. On this day, people welcome the God of Wealth 财神 by preparing feasts, eating dumplings, setting off firecrackers, and cleaning their homes, hoping for prosperity and health in the new year. It is one of the few more significant dates during the new year celebration. I am also getting ready to head to Toronto in a few days to...

Happy New Year of the Wood Snake! This is the first piece of the year of the Snake. I hope it brings you a moment of joy and peace. I had a wonderful family New Year’s Eve dinner. As a family tradition, my mom made a sweet rice cake with the character 福 (fú, meaning happiness or luck) on it that’s made of dates (photo below). The photo is upside down because the “upside down 倒了” also can be sai...

Happy Monday everyone, I just recorded this three-track guzheng piece. The weather is finally warming up in Nashville! My fingers are coming back to life again. As the Chinese New Year approaching soon (tomorrow is New Year’s Eve), I am feeling super excited to the year of the Snake to begin! I was picturing my fingers moving as fast as firecrackers popping, fueled by “way” too many sweets. Hope t...

Happy Friday everyone, The cold temperatures in here in Nashville will soon end. Instrumentalists really don’t do well in the cold. Hopefully this morning will be the last day at freezing level for a while. If you’re somewhere freezing and struggling to practice or exercise today, let’s pull through the cold together! On another subject, I am honored to be featured by Represent Asian . The full ar...

Good morning everyone, Lately, I have been doing Yin yoga in the evening before bedtime. I find it to be helpful for my sleep by adding this night time routine. Having music that is in the right vibe can make a big difference when I practice yoga. To pull myself out of the digital madness these days is essential to maintain a healthy life. This coming week and year will be full of ups and downs in...

Happy Friday everyone, All my friends and relatives in China have started the count down for the year to change to the Snake on January 29th. The traditional celebrations will last for 15 days once the new year starts. I am completely feeling the excitement now. I have also been practicing a fantastic guzheng concerto lately in preparation for the Lunar New Year Concert with the Toronto Symphony O...

Good morning everyone, This solo guzheng piece was recorded in one take an hour ago. It is an exercise on thumb tremolos. I have been thinking about how much convenience brought to us by technology nowadays. One realization is that we don’t use our hands to write any more, except to drive cars and type/swipe digital devices etc.. Maybe one day, we will stop learning how to play an instrument becau...

Hi everyone, I recorded this three-track guzheng composition after hiking in the snow today. I saw many animals’ footprints during the hike including the bobcat’s footprints (photo below). I believe it is a female cat. She has been living in the forest for at least three years. This is my third year in a row seeing this bobcat’s footprints in the snow. Two years ago, I spotted a bobcat kitten in t...

Happy Laba Festival to you all! Today is Laba Festival (臘八節). It is a traditional Chinese holiday celebrated on the eighth day of the month of La (or Layue 臘月), the twelfth month of the Chinese calendar. It is the beginning of the Chinese New Year period. The traditional food people eat on this day is Laba congee (臘八粥). The Laba Festival's name represents its date on the Chinese calendar....

Happy Monday everyone, I recorded this solo guzheng piece today when the snow was coming down. What a fun experience it was for me to accompany the dancing snow flakes! I’d like to quote the poet Zhāng Xiàn’s (1341 A.D.) poem for this moment: 听雪斋 The House of Listening to the Snow 张宪 [元代] 万籁入沈冥，坐深窗户明。微于疏竹上，时作碎琼声。 Translation: All sounds are in the deep darkness, I si...

Happy Friday everyone, I recorded this multi-track guzheng piece this morning. I used mostly harmonics on the open strings until the very last tremolo that ended the piece. While my right hand plucked the strings, my left hand lightly touched the half-point on the strings, which created the overtone that was an octave higher than the opening strings. An overtone is any resonant frequency above the...

Happy first day of 2025 everyone! You may have already entered 2025 by now. But it’s always good to keep the celebration going for a bit longer. I woke up this morning feeling excited because I had no agenda. The world is paused from expectations. To be able to recharge myself feels great. I am using this time to connect to friends, and to reflect on the past for the future. However, the only real...

Hi everyone, Hope you are having a peaceful holiday break whether it’s a winter break or a summer break. I took a few days off from posting on Substack to recharge myself. Thank you for being patient with me! Just now, I felt a strong urge to create this piece. Practicing music has become addictive to me. It feels weird not to practice. Even if I was on break from here the last a few days, I have...

Hi everyone, Happy many holidays! Two days ago, on Winter Solstice, my parents made dumplings as the northern Chinese tradition to celebrate this festival. (Over feeding the children is another Chinese tradition 😄). I thought about The Seventeen-Arch Bridge in the Summer Palace in Beijing. The bridge becomes symmetrical around the winter solstice. As the sun’s altitude angle decreases, a “golden...

Yesterday, I received a very sad news that Indian tabla master, composer, producer Zakir Hussain passed away. He was 73 years old. Zakir was known for bringing classical Indian music to a global audience. He was the eldest son of tabla player Alla Rakha, and won four Grammy Awards. Last year, my whole family was invited to see a house concert of the quartet of Zakir Hussain (tabla), Bela Fleck (ba...

Hi everyone, Hope you had a restful weekend. This night three-track night song was composed and recorded two days ago. A month ago, I gave concerts and workshops in Louisville, Kentucky (U.S.) as part of the Festival of Faiths. Dear friend Sara Callaway, director of Louisville Academy of Music (LAM) curated the music artists for the festival. We met at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville Tennessee many...

Happy Friday everyone, This video is from April 2024 filmed in New York City. I invited my long time collaborator double bassist Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz as my guest musician to perform at the Lincoln Center. The full concert on April 11, 2024 video is below on Lincoln Center’s YouTube channel. I always have a lot of fun playing with Shanir who is also an oud master. The oud is a Middle Eastern sho...

Hi everyone, This solo guzheng piece was recorded yesterday, inspired by a 1425 year-old poem from China by Chen Shubao 陳叔寶 (553-604), who was an emperor of the short-lived Chen Dynasty (557-589). The poem is called 玉树后庭花, which has been translated as “A Jade Tree Blossoms in the Back Garden,” but just I call it “Jade Tree.” It’s about a beautiful woman—the “back garden”—or more accurately...