WMI Plus At Home - Multi-Instrumentalist Jen Shyu

Jen Shyu is a vocalist, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, Guggenheim Fellow, Rome Prize Fellow, United States Artists Fellow, Doris Duke Artist, and Fulbright Scholar. Born in Peoria, Illinois, to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, her instruments include piano, violin, Taiwanese moon lute, Chinese er hu, Japanese biwa, and Korean gayageum. She’s performed with/sung the music of such musical pioneers as Sumi Tonooka, Nicole Mitchell, Val Jeanty, Ikue Mori, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Abigail Washburn, Martha Redbone, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Francis Wong, Jon Jang, Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, Kenny Barron, Reggie Workman, and Bill Frisell. Shyu has performed her own music at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, BAM, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ojai Festival, Ringling International Arts Festival, National Theater of Korea, and more. 

A Stanford University graduate speaking 10 languages, she’s studied traditional music and dance in Cuba, Taiwan, Brazil, China, Korea, East Timor and Indonesia, conducting extensive research culminating in her stage production Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, directed by renowned Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho. She’s produced eight albums and a single as a leader available on her label, Autumn Geese Records, landing on many best-of lists, including The New York Times, Nation, and NPR. She premiered her last solo work Nine Doors in 2017, kicking off a 50-state U.S. tour. She’s currently touring her third solo production Zero Grasses also commissioned by John Zorn. Brooklyn-based, Shyu with Sara Serpa co-founded Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M³), a radical model of mentorship for underrepresented composer-performers worldwide.

WMI is proud to have co-presented Jen with National Sawdust in 2017.

She will be joined in conversation by Rachel Cooper, the Director of Performing Arts and Culture as Diplomacy Initiatives at the Asia Society. She is widely recognized as a leader in the performing arts, developing projects that include a range of work by Asian and Asian American artists working across the spectrum from traditional to contemporary. A major focus of her work has been the commissioning of new work and framing the arts within a larger world of ideas across disciplines. She is a frequent participant at major conferences and commentator in the media (CNN, ABC, WNYC, New York Times) addressing global performing arts, international arts exchange, and cultural diplomacy. She directed the Festival of Indonesia In Performance, Festival of Korea, Muslim Voices: Arts and Ideas, Crossovers: Performing Arts of Asia America. She has served as an advisor and panelist for major international projects and arts institutions in the U.S., and in Asia. She is the recipient of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals award for Sustained Programmatic Excellence, Manhattan Borough award for Preserving and Sharing Cultural Diversity in New York City, a Global Citizen Diplomacy award for best practices in building bridges of understanding across cultures and a Rockefeller MAP award for choreography. She is the co-founder of the Balinese music and dance ensemble Gamelan Sekar Jaya and serves on the board of Cambodian Living Arts and Living Arts International, Cross Pulse, Gamelan Sekar Jaya as well as an advisor for the U.S. State Department’s Centerstage, Aga Khan Music Awards and the Doris Duke Building Bridges projects. She did her undergraduate and graduate studies at UCLA in World Arts and Cultures and Dance Ethnology.