Jane Manning, soprano
© Derek Tamea
Jane Manning was born in Norwich and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and in Switzerland. In her long career she has covered an exceptionally wide repertoire and has sung at many of the world’s leading Festivals and concert halls, appearing regularly in USA, Australasia and all over Europe as well as London, her home since 1965. Her engagements have included Bach under Karl Richter, Salieri under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, major operatic roles by Mozart, Purcell, Lully, Britten and Kurt Weill and countless BBC broadcasts of the standard recital repertoire.
She is especially renowned as an interpreter of contemporary music and has given more than 350 world premières, working closely with composers such as Birtwistle, Boulez, Cage, Carter, Maxwell Davies, Knussen and Weir. Her discography includes the major song cycles of Messiaen, all Satie’s vocal music, and works by Berg, Dallapiccola, Ligeti and Schönberg with conductors such as Boulez and Rattle.
In autumn 2004 she began three years of intensive performance-based research on Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (her interpretation of which is regarded as definitive) as AHRC Creative Arts Fellow at Kingston University, United Kingdom.
She is the author of two books on contemporary vocal repertoire, published by Oxford University Press. She was awarded the OBE in 1990, holds Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of York and Keele, and is a Fellow of both the Royal Academy and Royal College of Music. She is also much sought-after for her lectures, master classes and composer workshops, and has appeared in this capacity at many of the world’s leading campuses including Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Stanford and Columbia. She is married to the composer, writer and broadcaster Anthony Payne.
Further information can be found on the artist’s webpage: www.classical-artists.com/janemanning