Biography
Microtonal pioneer Joe Maneri entered the world in Brooklyn, New York, during 1927. He acquired clarinet technique from a local shoemaker and stepped onto the professional stage at seventeen, working the Catskills society-band route. Three years afterward he encountered Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method and promptly assembled his own twelve-tone jazz group while also appearing in assorted ethnic ensembles. A ten-year period of tutelage with composer Joseph Schmidt, a onetime Schoenberg pupil, ensued; conductor Eric Leinsdorf then noticed Maneri and requested a piano concerto from him. Atlantic captured his initial sessions in 1963, yet the tapes remained unissued until 1998, when John Zorn’s Avant imprint brought them out as Paniots Nine at the urging of American Splendor author Harvey Pekar.
Industry neglect in the early sixties kept Maneri largely inactive for the rest of that decade; he reemerged in 1970 as a theory and composition instructor at the New England Conservatory of Music. Microtonal exploration shaped both his later writing and his improvisations, culminating in the 1991 release Kalavinka on Leo—the first official documentation of his work and the conclusion of a thirty-year performing and recording hiatus. That album paired him with violinist son Mat Maneri and percussionist Masashi Harada. Two further projects appeared in 1995: the Leo date Get Ready to Receive Yourself and the ECM trio recording Three Men Walking with guitarist Joe Morris. The former, taped in 1993, introduced listeners to the Joe Maneri Quartet, completed by bassist John Lockwood and drummer Randy Peterson.
Hatology subsequently mined additional 1993 quartet material for the 1997 album Coming Down the Mountain and the 1999 set Tenderly, both featuring bassist Ed Schuller in place of Lockwood. ECM issued In Full Cry in 1997; the quartet, again with Lockwood, had recorded it the previous June in a German studio. Bassist Barre Phillips replaced Lockwood for the ECM releases Tales of Rohnlief in 2000 and Angles of Repose in 2004. In 2002 AUM Fidelity documented Going to Church, a collection of microtonal collective improvisations by the Maneri Ensemble that also included pianist Matthew Shipp and trumpeter Roy Campbell alongside the father-and-son Maneris, Phillips, and Peterson. On 24 August 2009, at the age of eighty-two, Joe Maneri died in Boston from complications following heart surgery.
Industry neglect in the early sixties kept Maneri largely inactive for the rest of that decade; he reemerged in 1970 as a theory and composition instructor at the New England Conservatory of Music. Microtonal exploration shaped both his later writing and his improvisations, culminating in the 1991 release Kalavinka on Leo—the first official documentation of his work and the conclusion of a thirty-year performing and recording hiatus. That album paired him with violinist son Mat Maneri and percussionist Masashi Harada. Two further projects appeared in 1995: the Leo date Get Ready to Receive Yourself and the ECM trio recording Three Men Walking with guitarist Joe Morris. The former, taped in 1993, introduced listeners to the Joe Maneri Quartet, completed by bassist John Lockwood and drummer Randy Peterson.
Hatology subsequently mined additional 1993 quartet material for the 1997 album Coming Down the Mountain and the 1999 set Tenderly, both featuring bassist Ed Schuller in place of Lockwood. ECM issued In Full Cry in 1997; the quartet, again with Lockwood, had recorded it the previous June in a German studio. Bassist Barre Phillips replaced Lockwood for the ECM releases Tales of Rohnlief in 2000 and Angles of Repose in 2004. In 2002 AUM Fidelity documented Going to Church, a collection of microtonal collective improvisations by the Maneri Ensemble that also included pianist Matthew Shipp and trumpeter Roy Campbell alongside the father-and-son Maneris, Phillips, and Peterson. On 24 August 2009, at the age of eighty-two, Joe Maneri died in Boston from complications following heart surgery.
Albums
Live
