Jane Manning

Jane Manning OBE (born 20 September 1938) is an English concert and opera soprano, writer on music, and Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music. She has been described by one critic as "the irrepressible, incomparable, unstoppable Ms. Manning - life and soul of British contemporary music"^[1]

In 1966, she married the composer Anthony Payne, but she does not use her married name professionally.

Early life

The daughter of Gerald Manville Manning and Lily Manning (née Thompson), Manning was born in Norwich in 1938 and educated at Norwich High School for Girls, the Royal Academy of Music (graduating LRAM in 1958), and the Scuola di Canto at Cureglia, Switzerland. She was promoted to ARCM in 1962.^[2][3]

Career

Manning's London début was in 1964 and her first BBC broadcast in 1965. She first sang at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert in 1972, was part of The Matrix with Alan Hacker, founded her own virtuoso ensemble, called Jane's Minstrels, in 1988, and has sung regularly in concert halls and festivals throughout Europe, specializing in contemporary music, with more than three hundred world premières given. She toured Australia and New Zealand in 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1990, 1996, 2000, and 2002, and the United States in 1981, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1996, and 1997.^[2]

Manning's unique voice and infallible sense of pitch have made her an exemplary performer of new music. She is the author of an important book called New Vocal Repertory.^[4] She is also widely considered to be one the world's finest performers of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire.

In his preface to Manning's 65th Birthday Concert at the Wigmore Hall in 2007, the British critic Bayan Northcott wrote:

It was an inspired choice to present Jane Manning as Miss Donnithorne, not only because she is an artist of astonishing gift but because she is also one of the greatest performers of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, and in her performance of the Maxwell Davies, the two pieces are palpably linked………. Her performance is desperately touching, the more disturbing for being played as reminiscence….. a performance of scorching intensity (without conductor).^[1]

Several leading composers have composed new works for Jane Manning including Harrison Birtwistle, James MacMillan and Colin Matthews. She commissioned the grand opera King Harald's Saga from Judith Weir in 1979. Richard Rodney Bennett's choral work Spells was written for her, as was Matthew King's The Snow Queen (1992).

The critic, Ivan Hewett, has written of Manning:

For many people Jane Manning is simply the voice of contemporary classical music in this country. Anyone who took an interest in this burgeoning area of music in the 1970s and '80s grew up with the sound of her astonishing voice in their ears. It’s instantly recognisable, but it’s also a chameleon. Whether she’s faced with the pure angular leaps of Anton Webern, the throaty suggestiveness of Schoenberg or the black, crazed humour of Gyorgy Ligeti, Jane Manning is always equal to the task.^[5]

Her premieres include the part of Max in Oliver Knussen's opera Where the Wild Things Are (1980). In 2007, she was awarded an honorary doctorate (along with her husband Anthony Payne) by the University of Durham, the first time the university has ever honoured a married couple in this way.

Appointments

• Member of International Jury, Gaudeamus Young Interpreters Competition, Holland, 1976, 1979, and 1987^[2]
• Milhaud Visiting Professor, Mills College, Oakland, 1983^[2]
• Lucie Stern Visiting Professor, Mills College, Oakland, 1981 and 1986^[2]
• Vice President, Society for the Promotion of New Music, 1984–^[2]
• Member of Jury, European Youth Competition for Composers, 1985^[2]
• Member of Executive Committee of Musicians Benevolent Fund, 1989–^[2]
• Chairman, Eye Music Trust (formerly Nettlefold Festival Trust), 1990-^[2]
• Member of Arts Council Music Panel, 1990–95^[2]
• Visiting Artist, University of Manitoba, 1992^[2]
• Visiting Professor, Royal College of Music, 1995–^[2]
• Honorary Professor, Keele University, 1996–2002^[2]
• AHRC Creative Arts Research Fellow, 2004–07, and Visiting Professor, 2007–2009, Kingston University^[2][6]

Publications

• chapter in How Music Works (1981)^[2]
• New Vocal Repertory (Vol. I, 1986, and Vol. II, 1998, Oxford University Press)^[2]
• chapter in A Messiaen Companion (1996)^[2]
• Pierrot Lunaire: practicalities and perspectives (Southern Voices, 2008)^[2]
• chapter in Cambridge History of Musical Performance (2009, Cambridge University Press)^[2]
• many articles in Composer, Music and Musicians, and Tempo^[2]

Honours

• Hon. ARAM 1972^[2]
• Special Award, Composers Guild of Great Britain, 1973^[2]
• Hon. FRAM 1984^[2]
• Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 1990^[2]
• Fellow of the Royal College of Music, 1998^[2]
• Hon doctorate, University of York, 1988^[2]
• Hon. Doctor of Music, University of Keele, 2004^[2]
• Hon. Doctor of Music, University of Durham, 2007^[2]

References

External links

• Jane Manning at classical-artists.com
• Jane Manning at orchestraoftheswan.org
• Dr Jane Manning at kingston.ac.uk
• Jane's Minstrels official web site