Michael Mantler

Michael Mantler was born in 1943 in Vienna, Austria, where he studied trumpet and musicology at the Academy of Music and Vienna University. In 1962 he went to the USA to continue his studies at the Berklee School. He moved to New York two years later, playing trumpet with Cecil Taylor, among others. During that period, as a founding member of the Jazz Composer's Guild, he formed a large jazz orchestra with Carla Bley. He recorded his Jazz Composer's  Orchestra album in 1968 and appeared as trumpet player on Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill.
 
In 1973, he started WATT Works, a record label devoted to his and Carla Bley's music. Rarely appearing live, except with the Carla Bley Band, he recorded a series of albums for the label: No Answer (set to the words of Samuel Beckett, sung by Jack Bruce),13 (for two orchestras and piano), The Hapless [...]
Michael Mantler was born in 1943 in Vienna, Austria, where he studied trumpet and musicology at the Academy of Music and Vienna University. In 1962 he went to the USA to continue his studies at the Berklee School. He moved to New York two years later, playing trumpet with Cecil Taylor, among others. During that period, as a founding member of the Jazz Composer's Guild, he formed a large jazz orchestra with Carla Bley. He recorded his Jazz Composer's  Orchestra album in 1968 and appeared as trumpet player on Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill.
 
In 1973, he started WATT Works, a record label devoted to his and Carla Bley's music. Rarely appearing live, except with the Carla Bley Band, he recorded a series of albums for the label: No Answer (set to the words of Samuel Beckett, sung by Jack Bruce),13 (for two orchestras and piano), The Hapless Child (with words by Edward Gorey, featuring Robert Wyatt), Silence (based on the Harold Pinter play), Movies (with Larry Coryell and Tony Williams), More Movies (with Philippe Catherine), Something There (with Mike Stern, Pink Floyd's Nick Mason and the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra), Alien (with Don Preston), Live, and Many Have No Speech (based on the poetry of Samuel Beckett, Ernst Meister and Philippe Soupault).
 
In 1991 he returned to live in Europe. Recording now for ECM, he released Folly Seeing All This (featuring the Balanescu String Quartet and including a setting of Samuel Beckett's last poem, sung by Jack Bruce), Cerco Un Paese Innocente (with singer Mona Larsen interpreting texts by Giuseppe Ungaretti), The School of  Understanding (with Jack Bruce, Robert Wyatt, Mona Larsen, Don Preston, John Greaves, Per Jørgensen, Susi Hyldgaard, and Karen Mantler), the orchestral work One Symphony (paired with Songs, again featuring Mona Larsen), Hide And Seek (an album of songs with words by Paul Auster, for chamber orchestra and the voices of Robert Wyatt and Susi Hyldgaard), the anthology Review (Recordings 1968 - 2000), Concertos (featuring soloists Bjarne Roupé, Bob Rockwell, Roswell Rudd, Pedro Carneiro, Majella Stockhausen, Nick Mason, and Mantler himself on trumpet), For Two, (duets for guitarist Bjarne Roupé and pianist Per Salo) and The Jazz Composer's Orchestra Update.
 
In recognition of his life's work he received several awards, including, among others, the Austrian State Prize for Improvised Music and the Music Prize of the City of Vienna. His subsequent work, Comment c'est (How It Is), a song cycle  for voice and chamber orchestra  (with his own texts, featuring Himiko Paganotti) was followed by his latest album, CODA - Orchestra Suites (reinterpretations of older works for large orchestra), as well as a series of print editions (including engraved scores of selected recorded work from a 50-year period).
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