Joe Maneri

Joseph Gabriel Esther "Joe" Maneri (February 9, 1927 – August 24, 2009), was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri 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".

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 Greek, Turkish, and Syrian music or Klezmer at weddings and other gatherings. He would later incorporate some elements of such music in his own compositions. He studied with Josef Schmid (not the tenor but a conductor and student of Alban Berg) for a decade before being commissioned by conductor Erich Leinsdorf to write a piano concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was rehearsed but never performed in concert.