Composer and author Tom Manoff has been the classical music critic for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered since 1985. Manoff’s reviews are much coveted by artists and record companies for their ability to move an even unknown artist’s recording to a top place on the Amazon.com classical chart overnight.
Manoff has also written for the New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. His first book The Music Kit (WW Norton and Company, 1976-2001) has long been among the top selling college textbooks for fundamentals of music. His second text, Music: A Living Language (Norton, 1982), was the first college text from a major publisher to explore all musical styles as equal art forms. His section on Joni Mitchell resulted in the singer asking Manoff to write a history of her music for industry release with her album Turbulent Indigo. Manoff appears also in the PBS American Masters documentary about Mitchell.
Manoff’s compositions include music for the Oscar-winning documentary Down and Out in the USA and Honor is so Sublime Perfection, performed at Tanglewood. He is currentlly working on an opera -The Trials of Katherina.
Born in Hollywood to a family of blacklisted artists, he moved to New York City in 1950. Manoff began piano studies at age 5. At 10, he began piano, theory and analysis with David Labovitz. Manoff dropped out of Columbia University after one term, unhappy with the music program, and became a civil rights activist. A founding member of Youth for Civil Rights, he was a CORE worker in Mississippi in 1964 and 1965.
Balancing political activism with music, Manoff enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music in 1965, where his most influential teachers were Ludmila Ulehla (theory and composition), Bronson Ragan (keyboard improvisation and figured bass), and Hugh Ross (conducting). Manoff joined the faculty of the Manhattan School’s Preparatory Division in 1967 while still a student, teaching theory, ear training and composition until 1978. In 1968 he also became head of theory, composition and teacher training at the Third Street Music School Settlement where he developed intensive programs for minority students with professional musical potential. He worked also in New York as a choral conductor, coach and in recording studios composing and producing in a variety of styles to supplement his teaching income.
Manoff’s current projects include Panculturalism, The Harmony Kit, The Trials of Katherina Kepler, an opera, and Chase the White Horse, a political memoir about his family. He lived in Germany, a short drive from Weil der Stadt, the birthplace of Katherina Kepler, when Manoff’s wife, mezzo-soprano Milagro Vargas, was a soloist with the Stuttgart Opera, Manoff divides his time now between New York and Oregon, where his wife teaches at the University of Oregon.
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