Joe Maneri

Who was Joe Maneri?

Joseph Gabriel Esther "Joe" Maneri, was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son.

After decades of obscurity, Maneri's distinctive saxophone and clarinet works gained praise and relative fame in the 1990s. To conventional Western sensibilities, some of his passages may sound 'out-of-tune'- but there is a consistent, internal logic to his unorthodox playing; critic Charlie Wilmoth describes Maneri's playing as "a slippery, space-filled alien blues".