Wen-Ting Wu Fuses Jazz, Spoken Word, and Improvisation to Channel the Spirit of Small Business Owners

Wen-Ting Wu is a Taiwanese drummer, composer, and educator based in New York City. She is a member of Grammy-winning artist Frank Lacy’s Septet and the AAPI Jazz Collective, and is endorsed by Canopus Drums.

Wu grew up in Taiwan playing piano from the age of five before moving to the drum kit in high school. She moved to New York in 2016 and earned her Master of Jazz Performance degree from Queens College. Her work spans jazz, contemporary music, and experimental composition, and has been presented at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club, Smalls Jazz Club, Smoke Jazz Club, Minton’s Playhouse, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, and the Public Theater. In 2019, she was signed to the iconic jazz label ESP-Disk, releasing the album Pause & Effect in 2021 to strong reviews from JazzTimes and the New York Jazz Record.

Wu’s relationship with Silver Lining began in 2022, when she won Silver Lining’s artist program and was commissioned to interview five women small business owners from marginalized communities. The result was As a Women… — a 19-minute jazz suite weaving spoken word drawn directly from those interviews with composed and improvised music. Her new composition for the Global series continues that same practice: listening first, then translating the spirit of small business owners into sound.

Silver Lining commissioned this work from Wen-Ting Wu as part of the small.artists Global series, supported by GoDaddy & JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Wu is currently based in New York City and performing across the jazz circuit.

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