Joe Maneri
American composer, jazz musician and microtonal innovator (1927–2009)
Joseph Gabriel Esther Maneri (February 9, 1927 – August 24, 2009) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son. Maneri was considered a pioneer and important theorist of microtonal improvisation.
Early in his career, Maneri played with Ted Harris and studied with composer Josef Schmid. In 37 years teaching at New England Conservatory of Music, his students included John Medeski, Marty Ehrlich, Eyvind Kang, Matana Roberts and Matthew Shipp. According to the New York Times:He rarely performed outside the academy in the first two decades of his teaching career. But when his son Mat, an accomplished improviser on violin and viola, started to perform in the late 1980s, he encouraged his father, then in his mid-60s, to return to the stage with his saxophone and clarinet.
The father and son began playing together, joined by the bassist John Lockwood and the drummer Randy Peterson. The Joe Maneri Quartet developed a cult following in Boston and by 1993 was performing around the world, presenting mysterious and original sets of free improvising, with shades of blues and ballad-style saxophone playing.
Boston Microtonal Society
In 1988, Maneri founded the Boston Microtonal Society, dedicated to microtonal music and tuning.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1691517. VIAF identifies the subject as 85531455. The Library of Congress control number is no00058758. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2009, 1993 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joe Maneri” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.