Jazz Articles about Mat Maneri

Mat Maneri & Randy Peterson: Light Trigger

by Michael A. Parker
October 1, 2000

This is a major document of improvised music that distills much of the radical content of the various groundbreaking ensembles that Mat Maneri and Randy Peterson have been involved with, most notably the Joe Maneri Quartet and the Mat Maneri Trio. Even for those familiar with this body of work, the intensity of this distillation will be a revelation. Enhancing the element of surprise on this recording is Mat Maneri's decision to play viola exclusively instead of his more typical ...

Mat Maneri Trio: Fifty-one Sorrows

by Robert Spencer
April 1, 2000

Fifty-one Sorrows is quite aptly named, for it features Mat Maneri at his most morose. The title track is a long, searching piece that has something to do, according to the liner notes, with “the extreme sorrow within joy." Maneri's playing expresses this profundity well, for even at its most sorrowful on this disc there is a fleeting and quicksilver joy at its heart.

This peculiar duality in Maneri's playing is perhaps most apparent on his homages to Ornette Coleman: ...

The Mat Maneri Trio: Fifty-one Sorrows

by Glenn Astarita
January 1, 2000

Violinist Mat Maneri continues his assault on modern improvised jazz with this new Trio outing titled, Fifty-One Sorrows. Here Maneri enlists fellow New Englanders, drummer Randy Peterson and bassist Ed Schuller, who are both at the pinnacle of their respective crafts while making leaps and bounds within modern jazz circles these days. The Trio is in top form on Fifty-One Sorrows especially on compositions such as Ornette Coleman’s “Tone Dialing” which boasts a hybrid swing/free-jazz motif while Maneri reworks the ...