Sarah Manning

year-round faculty

saxophone / composer

Sarah Manning is a saxophonist and composer who draws inspiration from surrealist painter Remedios Varo and works 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 worlds. Manning has released four critically acclaimed albums, including Harmonious Creature (Posi-Tone 2014), which was a top ten jazz pick of the Los Angeles Times. As a bandleader she has performed at venues including Dizzy’s Club Cola, Roulette, Yoshi’s, and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival as well as The Hundred Years Gallery in London. She is currently working on We Will Not Be Composed, a multimedia piece with author and activist Soraya Chemaly to challenge perceptions of women’s anger in America from silence to somatization to explosion. She is a two time MacDowell fellow in composition, a 2020 and 2021 MAP Fund grantee, and a 2021 NYSCA Composer Commission recipient. She can be heard on William Hooker’s recent release Big Moon (Org Music 2021).