Joe Maneri
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
jazz composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
and clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
player. Violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist Mat Maneri
Mat Maneri
Mat Maneri, born on October 4, 1969 in Brooklyn, New York is an American composer, improviser and jazz violin and viola player, specifically derivatives such as the five-string viola, the electric six-string violin, and the baritone violin...
is his son.
After decades of obscurity, Maneri's distinctive saxophone and clarinet works gained praise and relative fame in the 1990s. To conventional Western sensibilities, some of his passages may sound 'out-of-tune'- but there is a consistent, internal logic to his unorthodox playing; critic Charlie Wilmoth describes Maneri's playing as "a slippery, space-filled alien blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
".
Biography
An Italian-American born and raised in Brooklyn, Maneri played clarinet and saxophone in various dance bands and on the Catskill circuit as a teenager, often performing traditional GreekMusic of Greece
The music of Greece is as diverse and celebrated as its history. Greek music separates into two parts: Greek traditional music and Byzantine music, with more eastern sounds...
, Turkish
Music of Turkey
The music of Turkey includes diverse elements ranging from Central Asian folk music and has many copies and references of Byzantine music, Greek music, Ottoman music, Persian music, Balkan music, as well as more modern European and American popular music influences...
, and Syrian
Music of Syria
The music of Syria largely emanates from the country's capital and largest city, Damascus. The city has long been one of the Arab world's centers for cultural and artistic innovation, especially in the field of classical Arab music. Syria has also produced several pan-Arab stars, including George...
music or Klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
at weddings and other gatherings. He would later incorporate some elements of such music in his own compositions. He studied with Josef Schmid
Josef Schmid (composer)
Josef Schmid was a conductor, composer, and composition teacher. He was one of the first students of Alban Berg, with whom he studied before World War I. As a conductor Schmid had been an assistant to both Zemlinsky and Erich Kleiber...
(not the tenor but a conductor and student of Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
) for a decade before being commissioned by conductor Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf was a naturalized American Austrian conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality...
to write a piano concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was rehearsed but never performed in concert.
Maneri was impressed by the music of Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
and organized a jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
ensemble that performed some twelve tone music. (His later music is, however, not in the twelve-tone technique.) In 1963, this quartet recorded a demo for Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
, due in part to Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.- Biography and works :...
's interest in Maneri. The recording was not released until 1998, when American Splendor
American Splendor
American Splendor is a series of autobiographical comic books written by the late Harvey Pekar and drawn by a variety of artists. The first issue was published in 1976 and the most recent in September 2008, with publication occurring at irregular intervals...
writer Harvey Pekar
Harvey Pekar
Harvey Lawrence Pekar was an American underground comic book writer, music critic and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a critically acclaimed film adaptation of the same name.Pekar described American Splendor as "an...
— who had obtained a copy of the demo — played the music for composer John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
, who released the music on his Avant Records as Paniots Nine. The recording shows a synthesis of Maneri's experience with vernacular musics of American immigrants and his understanding of twelve-tone composition along with a developed style of "free" improvisation, analogous to the contemporaneous innovations by Sun Ra
Sun Ra
Sun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...
and Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
. In 1965, he performed, as soloist, a piece composed by David Reck. dedicated to Coleman and conducted by Schuller at Carnegie Hall. Little else was heard from him until he was hired, at the behest of Schuller, to teach at the New England Conservatory of Music
New England Conservatory of Music
The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent school of music in the United States.The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of...
in 1970. He led one of the few microtonal composition courses in the United States (Jamie Saft
Jamie Saft
Jamie Saft is a keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound engineer and producer living in upstate NY. Saft was born in Flushing Queens, New York in 1971 and is a graduate of both Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music. He has performed and recorded with John Zorn,...
, Cuong Vu
Cuong Vu
is a jazz trumpeter and vocalist.Born in Saigon, he left Vietnam with his family at the age of five in 1975, settling in Bellevue, Washington...
, Judith Berkson, Bhob Rainey, Katt Hernandez
Katt Hernandez
Katt Hernandez is a violinist living in Stockholm, Sweden with strong connection to Boston, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Baltimore, Maryland. Katt's violin playing employs many virtuostic extended techniques, as well as microtones. Her influences range a vast gamut of music, and...
, Tim Crofts,composer Randall Woolf and Matthew Shipp
Matthew Shipp
Matthew Shipp is an American pianist, composer and bandleader.Shipp was raised in Wilmington, Delaware, and began playing piano at six years old. His mother was a friend of trumpeter Clifford Brown....
have been among his students). In 1985 he co-wrote (along with Scott vanDuyne) and published the workbook Preliminary Studies in the Virtual Pitch Continuum. He was also part of the 80s klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
revival in New England.
Maneri continued his teaching, but performed and recorded rarely until the early 1990s, when his son Mat Maneri coaxed him into more public appearances. Joe said, "I had an experimental microtonal sextet about 15 years ago, which would practice in my house. One night, when he was 14, Mat came down from his bedroom with his violin and joined us. He was already the best player in the group. He set a pace for the rest of us." As Mat says, "Even, then, I thought of my role as being a bridge between this and that — Joe being 'that'."
Maneri gained significant attention, and released a number of recordings, often on ECM Records. His recorded music is informed by his microtonal theories and compositions which use 72 equal temperament
72 equal temperament
In music, 72 equal temperament, called twelfth-tone, 72-tet, 72-edo, or 72-et, is the tempered scale derived by dividing the octave into twelfth-tones, or in other words 72 equal steps...
, the equal division of the octave in 72 parts, although he doesn't confine himself to that temperament in performance: "We don't use theories when we play. We can't. We are those things. If they took X-rays of us, you would see all of the music inside" (Blumenthal, 1999).
In 1999, Tales of Rohnlief marked the recording debut of Maneri's own constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
.
Writer Harvey Pekar
Harvey Pekar
Harvey Lawrence Pekar was an American underground comic book writer, music critic and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a critically acclaimed film adaptation of the same name.Pekar described American Splendor as "an...
— a longtime fan of Maneri — insisted Maneri's music be featured in the film version of his comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
American Splendor
American Splendor
American Splendor is a series of autobiographical comic books written by the late Harvey Pekar and drawn by a variety of artists. The first issue was published in 1976 and the most recent in September 2008, with publication occurring at irregular intervals...
.
In 2003, 24 of Maneri's poems, written in his own language, were included in the anthology Asemia.
On May 17, 2009, three months before his death, Maneri was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from New England Conservatory.
He died of complications from heart surgery on August 24, at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
.
Discography
- 1963 Paniots Nine (Avant, released 1998)
- 1989 Kalavinka (Cochlea)
- 1993 Get Ready to Receive Yourself (Leo)
- 1993 Tenderly (hatOLOGY)
- 1993 Dahabenzapple (hatART)
- 1993 Coming Down the Mountain (hatOLOGY)
- 1995 Let the Horse Go (Leo)
- 1995 Three Men WalkingThree Men WalkingThree Men Walking is an album by American composer, composer, saxophone and clarinet player Joe Maneri with guitarst Joe Morris and violinist Mat Maneri recorded in 1995 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
(ECM) - 1995 Out Right Now (hatOLOGY)
- 1996 In Full CryIn Full CryIn Full Cry is an album by American composer, saxophonist and clarinet player Joe Maneri with guitarist Joe Morris and violinist Mat Maneri recorded in 1996 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
(ECM) - 1996 Acceptance (hatOLOGY)
- 1997 BlessedBlessed (Joe Maneri album)Blessed is an album by American composer, saxophonist and clarinet player Joe Maneri with his son, violinist Mat Maneri recorded in 1997 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
(ECM) - 1997 The Trio Concerts (Leo)
- 1998 Tales of RohnliefTales of RohnliefTales of Rohnlief is an album by American composer, saxophonist and clarinet player Joe Maneri with bassist Barre Phillips and violinist Mat Maneri recorded in 1998 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
(ECM) - 1998 A Cloud of Black Birds (AUM Fidelity)
- 1999 Soul Search (AUM Fidelity)
- 1999 At the Old Office (Knitting Factory)
- 2002 Angles of ReposeAngles of ReposeAngles of Repose is an album by American composer, saxophonist and clarinet player Joe Maneri with bassist Barre Phillips and violinist Mat Maneri recorded in 2002 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
(ECM) - 2002 Going To Church (AUM Fidelity)