Wu Fei’s Moon Hunter

Wu Fei is one of the most generous working musicians in the world, a master of the guzheng who not only updates the ancient Chinese instrument’s repertoire but also shares its story and sound with as many people as possible. To wit, when Covid-19 hamstrung all global touring in 2020, Fei launched an email newsletter, Music Daily; five years later, long after so many pandemic projects have faded, she is more than 1,200 entries deep, using the platform to offer new songs, improvisations, and interpretations of Chinese and American standards. That practice comports with her long-open approach to the instrument, whether it’s recording an album with Abigail Washburn, improvising with Fred Frith, or performing with oud master Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz, as she will also do at Big Ears 2026.

Moon Hunter is Fei’s solo program, combining bits of Chinese folklore and opera with the improvisational skills she began learning at Mills College and the songs she writes with guzheng. It takes its name from a piece she wrote for Music Daily during a Southern snowstorm, when the flakes on her porch suggested “random patterns—endless on the surface.” A multitracked wonder, where melodies spill into and out of one another as if on some ornate assembly line, it speaks both to Fei’s reverence for the instrument that she began playing when she was 5 years old and her interest in pushing it forward. Again, a generous teacher, Fei also takes the time to explain how the plucked and bent strings of the guzheng work during her sets, pulling its long past into the present.