NEWGRASSLANDS

NEWGRASSLANDS is a band from Shanghai with American bluegrass at its base. Its central figure is the mandolinist and composer Pang Zhipeng, who also records as Tom Peng and has been working with other musicians around bluegrass since 2012. Singer Nancy Nan fronts it. Members bring in the music of their own hometowns, and the band reaches into jazz improvisation, funk and pop as well.

Pang studied violin at the Art College of Mongolia University, then in 2009 took up the bluegrass mandolin program at Berklee College of Music in Boston on a full scholarship. He pairs mandolin with throat singing, an idea David Grisman has praised, and was part of the first Asian band invited to play RockyGrass, which the band calls the largest bluegrass festival in the United States.

Nancy Nan has traveled to the United States to study music since 2014, working country and bluegrass together with Chinese pop and traditional music. The band's album Newgrass Project, made with three American bluegrass players, is billed as the first bluegrass album recorded in China. Nostalgia adapted Chinese, Korean and Mongolian folk songs with two fiddles, and Stereotypes is a set of eight songs Pang began writing in 2020.