Alchemist

Saxophonist and composer Sarah Manning

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.

- Carlo Wolff, JazzTimes

Manning played her alto saxophone like a blade cutting into viscera.

- Josh Jackson, WBGO

Venturing into wide open spaces that occasionally recall the folk-tilted chamber jazz of guitarist Bill Frisell...

- Chris Barton, LA Times

Habersham Street provides the perfect musical backdrop for images of a rain-soaked and reflective Sam Spade…If anyone is about to film another James Ellroy novel, this is the band to call.

- Bruce Lindsay, All About Jazz

Sarah Manning proves to be a harmonious creature herself, capable of balancing order and chaos, shadows and light, and the simple and complex without issue.

- Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz

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

Melodies with a back-porch languor that sometimes jump out of their chair and go off and running, harmonies that melt into the skin like rays of sun and rhythms that develop an amicable chatter…

- Dave Sumner, eMusic

Sarah Manning can swing as naturally as she breathes – an enlivening presence in the new generation of jazz makers.

- Nat Hentoff

If there is to be jazz in our future, it’ll be because of musicians like saxophonist and composer Sarah Manning. Her music is unique, ultra-modern yet steeped in tradition, and it cooks.

- Jessica Williams

Artist Statement

My approach as a saxophonist and composer is informed by studying with the late multi-instrumentalist Dr. Yusef Lateef, who emphasized finding one’s own voice in music by pursuing a path of inquiry rather than replication of tradition.

I draw inspiration from surrealist painter Remedios Varo, and work to challenge and transmute music theory and history from jazz, experimental, and chamber music into a surreal landscape that activates the subconscious mind to envision alternate, more equitable futures.

My 2018 work for quartet, Transmuting Anger, began an ongoing exploration of women’s anger with a series of melodic fragments cued by alchemy symbols and tied together with improvisation, texture, vast dynamic shifts, and extended instrumental technique. I am currently working on We Will Not Be Composed, a new multimedia piece with author and activist Soraya Chemaly.

We Will Not Be Composed is a multimedia performance we are creating to challenge perceptions of women’s anger in America from silence to somatization to explosion. Audience members will simultaneously experience a live performance of a musical score through a multi-channel sound system, powerful visual elements, and recorded voices of women expressing their experiences with and ideas about anger. This project aims to provide a new framework to understand how women can express and transmute their anger into powerful social change. I am grateful to have received a 2021 NYSCA composer commission in support of the work, made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Soraya and I are also recipients of 2020 and 2021 awards from the MAP Fund, which is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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