About

Bio, press, and contact information.

Sarah Manning is a saxophonist and composer.

With her band Underworld Alchemy, she has been exploring women’s anger through her new work Transmuting Anger, which premiered at NYC’s Winter Jazzfest and the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle in 2018. She has released four critically acclaimed albums. Harmonious Creature (Posi-Tone 2014) received 4 stars in Down Beat Magazine, and was on multiple jazz top ten lists including the Los Angeles Times, Hank Shteamer’s list at Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches, and Burning Ambulance. In addition to being a MacDowell Fellow in composition (2012, 2021), she has received grants from the Northampton Arts Council and the Puffin Foundation to support performances that break down the barrier between artist and audience.

As a bandleader she has performed at venues across the United States including Dizzy’s Club Cola, Roulette, Yoshi’s and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival as well as The Hundred Years Gallery (London) and the Saalfelden Jazz Festival (Austria, with Zion 80). She has also worked with Briggan Krauss, Ebony Bones, Aram Bajakian, Monique Mizrahi, Jessica Ackerley, and William Hooker. Her Op-Ed: Saxophonist Sarah Manning on #MeToo and Sexism in Jazz for improvised and experimental music publication Jazz Right Now was published in 2017.

She can be heard on William Hooker’s new release Big Moon (Org Music 2021) and will be returning to live performance on June 25th, 2022 with Suzanne Farrin (ondes Martenot) and William Hooker at Hawks & Reed in Greenfield, MA as part of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

Manning is currently working on We Will Not Be Composed, a new multimedia piece with author and activist Soraya Chemaly. She is a 2021 NYSCA Composer Commission recipient for 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. We Will Not Be Composed also received 2020 and 2021 awards from the MAP Fund, which is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.