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Sarah Manning

Alto saxophonist and composer Sarah Manning is a harmonious creature. She is the lone red fox atop a pile of shale on the outskirts of the urban landscape, her singular musical voice illustrating the contradiction of an artist drawn to the woods even as she feels the gaze of a thousand bright city lamps. With the release of Harmonious Creature on Posi-Tone on January 21st, 2014, she unites the small town and the metropolis with compositions featuring violist Eyvind Kang, electric guitarist Jonathan Goldberger, bassist Rene Hart and drummer Jerome Jennings.

According to JazzTimes critic Carlo Wolff, “There’s something animistic about Manning’s work…Her music – original and brave – shows Manning knows where the wild things are. That’s because she’s one herself.” Much of the work on Harmonious Creature was written in the company of owl, coyote, bear, porcupine and salamander while Manning was an October 2012 Fellow in Composition at the MacDowell Colony. She worked in a studio in the New Hampshire woods Aaron Copland occupied in 1956, inspiring the composition “Copland on Cornelia Street” which imagines the American orchestral composer checking out the after hours New York City improvised music scene.

Manning has released four albums as a leader. Harmonious Creature is her second for Posi-Tone Records, the follow up to 2010’s Dandelion Clock, which was number one on Carlo Wolff’s top-ten list for JazzTimes and landed her third place in the 2010 JazzTimes Reader’s Poll in the category of Best New Artist. Dandelion Clock was an early June top-ten pick for 2010 by NPR’s A Blog Supreme. In 2011, Manning led her quartet at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival in support of the material on the album.

Sarah Manning began her recording career in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recognition of her individual voice came early in the form of liner notes by Nat Hentoff for her debut, House on Eddy Street (Elflion Records 2004). Hentoff wrote: “Manning plays – and writes – in what is unmistakably her own voice.” David Franklin of JazzTimes was in agreement, saying, “Sounding like no one but herself, she possesses a well-focused, slightly edgy tone…” In 2006 she released Live at Yoshi’s: Two Rooms Same Door on ArtistShare, an interactive experience with fans that included downloadable audio broadcasts, sheet music, essays and documentation of the creative process involved in recording live at Yoshi’s Jazz House in Oakland. In 2007 she was profiled in the DownBeat Player’s section and in Chamber Music Magazine, helping to bring her work to a national audience.

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Album Review

Sarah Manning: Harmonious Creature

Read "Harmonious Creature" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


La giovane sassofonista del New Hampshire, estremo nord-est statunitense, ha certo più di una freccia al suo arco. Ce lo dice con chiarezza questo suo ultimo lavoro, inciso all'inizio del 2013 alla testa del proprio quintetto, entro cui un ruolo quasi altrettanto rilevante della leader gioca il violista Etvind Kang, specificatamente per l'impasto (per certi versi il contrasto) timbrico --e conseguentemente dinamico--che il suo strumento sa generare col sax alto, appunto, di Sarah Manning, acidulo, asprigno, spesso turgido, con più ...

5
Album Review

Sarah Manning: Harmonious Creatures

Read "Harmonious Creatures" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


In order to create the music for Harmonious Creatures, saxophonist Sarah Manning had to put the hustle and bustle behind her. She picked herself up and took to the woods, composing and communing with nature at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire where she was living out her time as a MacDowell fellow in October of 2012. The time she spent at that artist's refuge gave her a chance to reflect, bridge worlds, and blur lines in her compositions. The ...

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Interview

Sarah Manning: Shattering The Glass Ceiling

Read "Sarah Manning: Shattering The Glass Ceiling" reviewed by David A. Orthmann


Listening to Sarah Manning speak at length is nearly as absorbing as her music. She's intelligent, direct, witty, and serious-minded. As Manning waxes eloquent on topics ranging from the impact of three special mentors, to the benefits of being a well-rounded person, to issues surrounding woman's empowerment, you realize that she relishes every aspect of her life. The alto saxophonist and composer is the leader of the New York City-based band Shatter the Glass. Both on and off the bandstand, ...

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Album Review

Sarah Manning: Dandelion Clock

Read "Dandelion Clock" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose


It takes a long time for the delightful shock of first hearing Sarah Manning's emphatic, almost blasé, voice--rich, tunefully accented and almost bronzed, as full as a sudden blast of sunshine. The first sounds of her alto saxophone are so indelibly burned in the memory that virtually everything else becomes a blur except undulating glissandos of her melodic outbursts that often end in shy tremolos. The brilliant alto saxophonist waxes eloquent in a forthright, exacting voice, with fluid and bright ...

200
Album Review

Sarah Manning: Dandelion Clock

Read "Dandelion Clock" reviewed by Woodrow Wilkins


It may take years of listening before a music enthusiast can identify the sound of a musician, distinct and separate from others who play the same instrument. David Sanborn, Bob Mintzer and Jay Beckenstein are just a few examples of saxophonists whose voices are easily distinguished. Sarah Manning hopes to join their ranks. Manning began playing jazz during junior high school, where her dissonant arrangements caught the attention of the school's founder, Jackie McLean. She later entered the ...

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Album Review

Sarah Manning: Dandelion Clock

Read "Dandelion Clock" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay


The cover of Dandelion Clock, Sarah Manning's third album as leader, shows the saxophonist in soft focus, lying on a bed of fallen autumn leaves and lightly cradling her alto. It's standard smooth jazz cover art--but appearances can be deceptive, for Manning is one of the hardest-blowing and intense of musicians while her talents as a composer result in some fine original tunes. Manning's distinctively hard-edged, even aggressive, tone dominates this album from the opening bars of ...

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Album Review

Sarah Manning: Dandelion Clock

Read "Dandelion Clock" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Abstraction and accessibility isn't an easy match, but alto saxophonist Sarah Manning weds the two with fine results on Dandelion Clock. Manning's desire to create “a working, stable group that through rehearsals and philosophy lives and breathes on stage as a musical unit," is largely achieved with this quartet, featuring bassist Linda Oh, pianist Art Hirahara and drummer Kyle Struve.

These players aren't content to just play time or deliver, bland cliché-ridden music. While Manning bookends the album with two ...

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66

Radio

The Jazz Session #247: Sarah Manning

The Jazz Session #247: Sarah Manning

Source: AAJ Staff


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Interview

Saxophonist Sarah Manning Interviewed at AAJ

Saxophonist Sarah Manning Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz

Listening to Sarah Manning speak at length is nearly as absorbing as her music. She's intelligent, direct, witty, and serious-minded. As Manning waxes eloquent on topics ranging from the impact of three special mentors, to the benefits of being a well-rounded person, to issues surrounding woman's empowerment, you realize that she relishes every aspect of her life. The alto saxophonist and composer is the leader of the New York City-based band Shatter the Glass. Both on and off the bandstand, ...

147

Recording

Sarah Manning - Dandelion Clock (2010)

Sarah Manning - Dandelion Clock (2010)

Source: Something Else!

By Pico“Finding your own voice" is such an overused phrase these days. That especially holds true in the music business, where such rote advice is handed out like doubloons at a Mardi Gras parade. The young, alto-tenor saxophone specialist Sarah Manning has heard those words herself, but probably since they came directly from sages like Jackie McLean and Yusef Lateef, she actually took the advice to heart. And if there's one thing that stands out the most about ...

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Recording

Sarah Manning - Dandelion Clock (Positone)

Sarah Manning - Dandelion Clock (Positone)

Source: Master of a Small House

A few seconds with Sarah Manning's cutting and passionate alto and it comes as no surprise that one of her key early mentors was none other than Jackie McLean. Manning also studied with Yusef Lateef on one leg of a cross-coastal odyssey that eventually ended in New York City. This quartet set, her debut for Positone, displays the logical benefits of those peregrinations. Manning officiates a program comprised of originals save for Jimmy Rowles' “The Peacocks" and Michel Legrand's “The ...

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Performance / Tour

Tonight - Saxophonist/Composer Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass at Cornelia Street Cafe

Tonight - Saxophonist/Composer Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass at Cornelia Street Cafe

Source: Michael Ricci

Double Bill With Saxophonist Sean Nowell

Tonight, September 9th, at 8:30PM, Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass debuts at the Cornelia Street Cafe in Manhattan’s West Village. Catching fire on the West Coast, alto saxophonist Sarah Manning was recently reborn from the ashes onto the New York scene. With bassist Linda Oh, pianist Art Hirahara and drummer Kyle Struve, the group will deconstruct and reconstruct Manning’s compositions against the red velvet backdrop of the Cornelia Street stage.

According to Grammy nominated ...

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Music Industry

Saxophonist and Composer Sarah Manning Signed to Posi-Tone Records

Saxophonist and Composer Sarah Manning Signed to Posi-Tone Records

Source: Michael Ricci

New York City based alto saxophonist and composer Sarah Manning has signed on to Posi-Tone Records and will be recording a new album this fall, with an anticipated release of Spring or Summer of 2010. The Posi-Tone release will be Manning’s third album as a leader, and the first to feature her regular quartet, Shatter the Glass, with Art Hirahara on piano, Linda Oh on bass and Kyle Struve on drums. During performances at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola After Hours ...

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Performance / Tour

Saxophonist Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass Tonight in Harlem at Bflat Universe!

Saxophonist Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass Tonight in Harlem at Bflat Universe!

Source: Michael Ricci

Tonight, Friday August 7th, at 7:00PM, saxophonist and composer Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass performs as part of the Brownstone Music Series in Harlem. Produced by cellist Nioka Workman, the concert will take place in the parlor of Bb Universe, a landmark brownstone located behind the state office building at 169 West 126th Street. Music will be from 7:00 PM to 9:00PM, and features Manning on alto saxophone, Art Hirahara on piano, Gary Wang on bass and Kyle Struve on ...

187

Performance / Tour

Saxophonists Sarah Manning and Sean Nowell Double Bill Friday May 1st at Ibeam Brooklyn

Saxophonists Sarah Manning and Sean Nowell Double Bill Friday May 1st at Ibeam Brooklyn

Source: All About Jazz

This Friday May 1st at 9PM, Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass debuts at Ibeam Brooklyn in a performance marking the alto saxophonist's first show as an official NYC resident. Featuring pianist Art Hirahara, bassist Linda Oh and drummer Kyle Struve, the group will showcase Manning's original compositions including new work that will be recorded this fall as part of her third release as a leader. Explosive musical storytellers, they delight in performing in intimate and unusual spaces ranging from the ...

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Performance / Tour

Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass on 4/24 at Jazz Gallery

Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass on 4/24 at Jazz Gallery

Source: All About Jazz

On Thursday, April 24th, 2008, alto saxophonist and composer Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass will return to the Jazz Gallery for two sets. Pianist Art Hirahara, bassist Thomson Kneeland and drummer Kyle Struve add their unique voices to the fray, propelled by the iconoclastic compositions of Manning. Sets start at 9PM and 10:30PM. Tickets are $12 for the general public and $10 for Jazz Gallery members.

According to Grammy nominated pianist Jessica Williams, “If there is to be jazz in ...

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Performance / Tour

Mentoring Opportunity for Female Instrumentalists at Jazz Gallery 4/24 with Sarah Manning

Mentoring Opportunity for Female Instrumentalists at Jazz Gallery 4/24 with Sarah Manning

Source: All About Jazz

On Thursday, April 24th, 2008, saxophonist and composer Sarah Manning's Shatter the Glass will return to the Jazz Gallery for two sets. Female instrumentalists can apply to attend the performance of Manning's compositions featuring Art Hirahara on piano, Thomson Kneeland on bass and Kyle Struve on drums, as a special guest of the band. Attend the private sound check, meet the Shatter the Glass members, and gain free admission to the show.

Any female instrumentalist of any age is eligible. ...

"Not only is Sarah Manning a fearless and intense player, she’s a fearless and intense composer...Restless, irrepressible, unafraid and unfailingly terse, much of what she does here is transcendent." - Lucid Culture, on Dandelion Clock

”With Two Rooms Same Door, Sarah Manning’s second CD, the young Bay Area saxophonist announces her arrival as a unique voice in a generation often derided for a lack of individuality. Manning sounds like nobody else, in her distinctive alto tone or in her intriguing compositional style.” — Forrest Dylan Bryant, fojazz.com

”Sarah Manning can swing as naturally as she breathes—an enlivening presence in the new generation of jazz makers” —Nat Hentoff, liner notes for HOUSE ON EDDY STREET

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Primary Instrument

Saxophone

Willing to teach

Beginner to advanced

Credentials/Background

Available for private instruction in studio or via Skype. Sarah Manning has a wide variety of experience with students of all ages. She has taught as an adjunct private lessons instructor at Smith College, at Berkeley California's Jazzschool Summer Youth Music Program, the Jazzschool Course "Improvising Eighth Note Lines" for adults, Composition and Performance at Excel at Amherst College, and as a music instructor (sax, clarinet, trombone, trumpet) in the South Hadley Public Schools

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Harmonious Creatures

Posi-Tone Records
2014

buy

Harmonious Creature

Posi-Tone Records
2014

buy

Dandelion Clock

Posi-Tone Records
2010

buy

House On Eddy Street

Elflion Records
2005

buy

Videos

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