A Chat with Tingting Wu (14.08.2026)
Founder of LumiMusic, Tingting Wu is more than an accomplished concert pianist. With an immersive concert experience and delicate original compositions, she has been delighting audiences. Her single ‘The Music Box Lovers’ continues her captivating classical tones, while her upcoming shows are sure to engage the senses. We had the chance to talk to her about her music, influences, LumiMusic and much more!
OSR: You are quite an accomplished concert pianist, but you are also a composer and the founder of LumiMusic. How did your love of music start?
Tingting: I think it can actually be difficult to fall in love with music when you’re still struggling with technique as a child and practising an instrument for eight hours a day! The fun really begins once your fingers become flexible, fast and clear enough to play whatever you want. Then, the instrument stops feeling like something you’re trying to control and starts becoming part of your own voice. You can use it to express emotions, tell stories and share feelings that might be difficult to put into words.
OSR: You founded LumiMusic, which is an immersive concert experience combining live piano performances and synchronised lighting for deeper storytelling. What was the inspiration behind LumiMusic?
Tingting: LumiMusic is really my true love, and whenever I perform a LumiMusic concert, it can honestly be one of my happiest days! I remember attending a traditional concert one day where the lighting was very dim, and I actually fell asleep in my seat! Looking around, I noticed that I wasn’t alone – some people seemed sleepy, while others were distracted by their phones. I remember thinking to myself, “Concerts should NOT be like this!”
That experience became part of the inspiration behind LumiMusic. So much great classical music is incredibly rich in emotion, atmosphere and storytelling, but for a general audience, some of those emotional changes can be difficult to detect through sound alone. I began imagining colored lighting that could change together with the music, visually reflecting its moods and emotions and helping the audience experience the story on another level.
The idea first came to me in 2020, and I presented my first concert built around the concept in 2022, while I was still a doctoral student. Since then, LumiMusic has continued to grow and evolve with me.
OSR: In 2025, you were invited to the New York AI International Film Festival to perform under LumiMusic at the award ceremony. What was that experience like?
Tingting: Oh wow – it really was a “WOW” experience! There were so many accomplished people from the international film industry in the audience, including Emmy Award-winning directors, Oscar-winning figures, prominent screenwriters, and major film directors from China. The ceremony was held at Symphony Space on Broadway in New York City, so I was incredibly excited, but also nervous. It felt like a very high-stakes performance!
I remember during the dress rehearsal, there was a close-up camera zooming directly onto my hands to capture every detail of the performance, and I thought, “Wow, this is serious!” Afterward, I learned that the full house included more than 700 people, many from the film industry.
What made the experience especially meaningful was the reaction afterward. People came up to me genuinely excited and told me they had never seen a piano performance presented like this before. That was a wonderful moment for me, because it confirmed something I had believed for a long time: LumiMusic works. People can connect with piano music differently when sound, color, light and emotion become part of the same experience. It remains one of my favorite and most memorable performances of recent years.
OSR: Along with LumiMusic, you also compose original songs that will be integrated into the performances. What is your creative process for composing and then combining with lights?
Tingting: Actually, when I compose, I don’t think about specific lighting at all. It always begins with an emotion or a story that I want to express. Sometimes what I’m feeling isn’t easy to put into words, especially when there are two or three different emotions happening at the same time – but music can do that!
Once the emotions and the musical scenes begin to take shape, pictures naturally start appearing in my mind. From those pictures come colors, and then I begin imagining how different colors and combinations of lighting could emphasize the emotions already inside the music. So for me, it always starts with the music and the feeling first. The lighting comes afterward as another layer of storytelling, almost like giving the emotions in the music a visual form.
OSR: Do you ever find it difficult to match the lighting to the music?
Tingting: Of course! I’m not going to lie – creating colored lighting and deciding how it should change with the music is not easy. It is another form of creation, and creating something new is always more challenging than following something that already exists. But that’s also the fun of it!
Creation gives you a kind of freedom that simply following an existing path can never give you. There isn’t always one “correct” color for a particular sound or emotion, so the possibilities are endless. I can experiment with colors, transitions, intensity and different combinations until I feel that the lighting belongs with the music.
That’s why I love creating the colored lighting for LumiMusic, and it’s also why I love composing. Both are difficult, but both give me an incredible sense of freedom – and there are always more possibilities to discover.
OSR: You recently released the single ‘The Music Box Lovers’ which is a delicate story that almost feels like something from Disney. Can you tell us more about this release?
Tingting: Haha! I would call it a dark Disney love story. It tells the story of a lonely prince who is trapped inside a delicate music box. One day, a princess discovers him and realizes that he cannot step out of the box. Instead of leaving him behind, she chooses to step inside and dance with him.
But I intentionally left the ending open. Did they live happily ever after inside the music box, or did the princess become trapped there too? I want listeners to decide for themselves.
Musically, I wanted it to sound delicate, beautiful and almost innocent, like a cute music box, while underneath there is also something slightly dark and unsettling. I love putting contrasting emotions together in the same piece. Sometimes something can be beautiful and disturbing at exactly the same time.
OSR: Through your music and LumiMusic, you are looking to redefine how classical music is experienced, but what are you hoping people will feel when they watch or listen to your music?
Tingting: I want people to see, feel, and understand themselves better after watching or listening to my music. Maybe an emotion or a story in one of my pieces reminds someone of a memory from their own life, or makes them feel something they haven’t thought about for a long time.
If people can leave a LumiMusic concert feeling touched, inspired, or with more appreciation for something in their own lives, then I feel that I have accomplished my goal. The same is true when someone discovers one of my compositions online. If my music can simply give someone a moment to feel, imagine, or remember something of their own, that would make me very happy.
OSR: Along with everything else you do, you also earned your Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. How do you feel what you learnt impacts how you create music?
Tingting: I was deeply and very positively influenced by my time at the University of Miami. My doctoral studies at the Frost School of Music gave me an even deeper understanding of piano performance, interpretation and the traditions behind the music, but at the same time, I was also encouraged to explore my own ideas and think beyond the traditional concert format.
When I first talked about the idea of LumiMusic with Shelly Berg, the Dean of the Frost School of Music, he was very supportive and encouraged me to pursue it. The school also allowed me to use its concert hall to experiment with my first LumiMusic concert in 2022.
The effect surprised even me! People were completely focused on the performance, watching every change in the lighting – I joked that nobody wanted to blink because they might miss the next color! Haha. That experience gave me a lot of confidence in continuing to develop the idea. I think Frost gave me both a strong musical foundation and an environment where I felt encouraged to create something of my own.
OSR: Do you have any advice for people who are looking to find their own distinctive voice and style in music?
Tingting: Chase your own voice and your own dream. I believe we rarely regret the things we genuinely tried, but we often regret the things we were too afraid to try. So if there is something in music that feels truly yours, just do it!
OSR: What are your plans for the future? What more can we expect from you and LumiMusic?
Tingting: I plan to keep composing, performing, and developing LumiMusic! I have many more musical stories and ideas that I want to share with you, and I’m excited to integrate more of my original compositions into future LumiMusic performances.
Our next LumiMusic concert will be on September 26th, 2026, in Miami. I will see you all there! 🙂
Many thanks to Tingting Wu for speaking with us. Find out more about Tingting on her official website and Spotify.
