Warren's performance activity — solo, with Mang Rope, and through First Flush — takes place across independent concerts, art events, live music spaces, and university programs in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., including venues and settings connected to the Peabody Institute and Johns Hopkins University.
Musician · Composer · Performer · Artistic Director
Warren
Wang
Music as performance, experimentation, and shared experience.
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Introduction
Warren Wang works across jazz, improvisation, electronic composition, and artist-led community practice — treating music less as a fixed genre than as a language for experimentation, attentive listening, and human connection. His current activity moves between two organizations he founded and directs, Mang Rope and First Flush, alongside an ongoing solo practice in electronic composition and a foundation in jazz guitar.
Current Practice
Four ways of working, one continuing practice
01 — Ensemble
Mang Rope
Avant-garde ensemble founded 2023. No wave, free improvisation, and the members' Chinese cultural heritage, active across Baltimore and D.C.
02 — InitiativeFirst Flush
Interdisciplinary practice founded 2026 — electronic music, tea practice, meditation.
03 — SoloElectronic Music
Ambient and techno composition in VCV Rack modular synthesis.
04 — FoundationJazz & Improvisation
His training at the Peabody Institute.
About
A practice held together by listening
Warren Wang is a musician, composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Baltimore. Trained in jazz guitar at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, he works across improvisation, avant-garde ensemble music, electronic composition, and collaborative project development — leading two organizations of his own founding, Mang Rope and First Flush.
His training at Peabody built a foundation in jazz guitar performance, improvisation, and ensemble playing, but Warren's development as an artist has continued well past the edges of a single instrument or genre.
In 2023 he founded Mang Rope, an avant-garde, no-wave-influenced ensemble active across Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Drawing on free improvisation, the city's independent music community, and the members' Chinese cultural backgrounds, the group has built a body of original work — two studio albums, one EP, and a run of singles, with more currently in production — often performed in Mandarin as well as English.
Alongside the ensemble, Warren composes and performs electronic music on his own, using VCV Rack modular synthesis to build ambient and techno-based pieces concerned with repetition, atmosphere, and contemplative attention.
In 2026 he founded First Flush, an interdisciplinary initiative that brings that same electronic practice into conversation with traditional Chinese tea preparation and meditation — an ongoing inquiry into what a shared, unhurried listening space can offer the people inside it. Its first Baltimore gathering drew around 100 participants.
Warren treats these strands — jazz performance, ensemble leadership, electronic composition, and interdisciplinary programming — not as separate careers but as related expressions of one continuing practice.
Artist Statement
— Warren WangMy practice is rooted in music, though not bound to one genre or format. I move across jazz guitar, improvisation, experimental ensemble work, electronic composition, and interdisciplinary projects — treating each as a different register of the same underlying interest.
Improvisation sits at the center of it: a way of listening as much as playing, responding to other musicians in real time rather than working toward a predetermined outcome. That shapes not only performance, but how I lead an ensemble and build a project from the ground up.
Jazz gave me the grounding — in structure, interaction, and instrumental technique. Mang Rope is where that grounding met something less contained: no wave, free improvisation, Baltimore's experimental scene, and my own Chinese background, most audibly in the Mandarin that runs through the group's music — not as a stylistic flourish, but as part of how the group speaks.
Electronic composition asks something different of me. Working with modular synthesis, repetition, and live processing has made me think about music as something that shapes time and atmosphere as much as it fills them — listening as a physical experience, not only a perceptual one.
First Flush grew out of that thinking: an attempt to put music in the same room as tea practice, meditation, and unhurried company, and see what kind of attention that room can hold.
Across all of it, I'm interested in work that stays open — to collaboration, to cultural exchange, to the unplanned. That openness, more than any one form, is the practice.
Practice — Founded 2023
Mang Rope
An avant-garde ensemble founded by Warren Wang in 2023 — no wave, free improvisation, and the members' Chinese cultural backgrounds, active across Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
- Role
- Founder, Artistic Director, Guitarist
- Location
- Baltimore & Washington, D.C.
- Forms
- Live performance, composition, improvisation, recording
- Influences
- No wave, jazz, free improvisation, Chinese language & cultural experience
- Releases
- Two studio albums, one EP, multiple singles
Practice — Founded 2026
First Flush
An interdisciplinary practice founded by Warren Wang in 2026, bringing ambient electronic music into the same space as traditional Chinese tea practice and contemplative listening — an environment for slowing down, rather than a performance.
- Role
- Founder, Artistic Director
- Forms
- Electronic music, tea practice, meditation, contemplative listening
- Focus
- Well-being, community connection, reflection, belonging
- Inaugural audience
- Approx. 100 participants, Baltimore
Spaces to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect — with oneself, and with others.
Practice — 2026–Present
Electronic Music
Working alone, Warren composes and performs ambient and techno-based electronic music using VCV Rack modular synthesis — built on the slow development of a single sonic environment, rather than exchange between musicians.
- Role
- Composer & Live Performer
- Tools
- VCV Rack modular synthesis
- Forms
- Ambient music, techno-based composition, live electronic performance
Attention, atmosphere, and the perception of time.
Practice — Foundation
Jazz & Improvisation
Jazz guitar and improvisation are the foundation Warren's other work is built on — training at the Peabody Institute that shaped how he listens, collaborates, and composes in real time.
- Foundation
- Jazz Guitar, Peabody Institute
- Related project
- Peabody Improvisor Collective, 2023–Present
- Core skills
- Improvisation, ensemble playing, contemporary performance practice
Listening, in real time — the habit jazz builds before anything else does.
Performances
Where the work happens
- Independent venuesConcerts and art events across Baltimore and D.C.
- University programsPeabody Institute and Johns Hopkins University settings
- First Flush gatheringsInterdisciplinary events built around listening and gathering
A calendar of upcoming performances will be added here as dates are confirmed.
CV
Artistic record
Education
Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Bachelor of Music, Jazz Guitar
Expected 2027
Artistic Experience
Founder & Artistic Director — First Flush
2026–Present
Founder, Artistic Director & Guitarist — Mang Rope
2023–Present
Electronic Music Artist
2026–Present
Founder & Guitarist — Peabody Improvisor Collective
2023–Present
Selected Releases — Mang Rope
Two studio albums
One EP
Multiple singles
Additional albums and EPs currently in production
Languages
English
Mandarin Chinese
Skills
Jazz guitar performance · Electronic music composition · Live electronic performance · VCV Rack modular synthesis · Improvisation · Ensemble leadership · Artistic direction · Event production · Collaborative project development · Concert & performance coordination
Upcoming
No performances are currently scheduled. New dates will be posted here as they're confirmed.
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