Photograph: Derek Tamea

"the irrepressible, incomparable, unstoppable Ms. Manning - life and soul of British contemporary music". . Michael White - The Independent on Sunday

It is three decades since William Glock commissioned a Japanese song cycle, The Valley of Hatsu-Se from Elisabeth Lutyens for the Dartington Summer School. Casting around around for a soloist, he decided to risk a young soprano just a year into her professional career. No doubt those who heard that first performance were already struck by Jane Manning's silvery evenness of tone, ardent intelligence of expression and uncanny accuracy of intonation. The sheer energy of her commitment to contemporary music was soon to become apparent.

Since then, Jane Manning must have premiered something approaching 350 new works - gaining her a special award for services to music from the Composers Guild of Great Britain back in 1973, an Honorary Doctorate at York University in 1988 and, in 1990, the OBE. Yet perhaps the salient glory has been her constancy - not just the first, but the second, third, even fiftieth performances of the works she believes in and the long-standing artistic relationships she has sustained with so many composers.

Nor has her drive confined itself to performance. She has served for years as a Vice President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, travelled the world teaching voice and compiled an invaluable survey, New Vocal Repertory (OUP) was published in 1998. And in 1988, she and her composer-husband, Anthony Payne founded the highly successful group Jane's Minstrels as a means not only of gaining a freer hand in programming her own repertory, but of inducting some of the brightest young players around into a gamut of 2Oth century music.

©1994 Bayan Northcott

Just where has she found the unfailing energy, concentration, and, indeed, love to carry her through some four decades of dedicated music-making? For while we think of Jane Manning as the immaculate professional, who always, but always, delivers, we think, too, of her overflowing solicitude for the composers, performers, pupils and listeners she has served so well. This notion of music as the central focus of what amounts to a vastly extended family life is surely the key to her uniqueness. Performer, teacher, writer, impresario and, not least, Muse to a husband of ideally complementary gifts, her career over the years has virtually constituted a musical education in itself for those who have followed its unfolding……. it is an unalloyed pleasure to hail her achievement.
(Preface to Jane Manning's 65th Birthday Concert at the Wigmore Hall, 19/10/07.)

©2003 Bayan Northcott

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Photograph: Tim Williams

Jane Manning still enjoys an active performing career, and her recent performances of Maxwell Davies's MISS DONNITHORNE'S MAGGOT in London, Italy and Spain and at leading UK Festivals , have won exceptional praise

"……brilliant fusion of advanced singing techniques, acting chumps, and the general ability to lift a skirt and scatter icing without seeming absurdly grotesque." The Times

"….soprano Jane Manning gave a riveting performance as Miss Donnithorne…. touching and funny.." Daily Telegraph

"It was an inspired choice to present Jane Manning as Miss Donnithorne, not only because she is an artist of astonishing gift but because she is also one of the greatest performers of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, and in her performance of the Maxwell Davies, the two pieces are palpably linked………. Her performance is desperately touching, the more disturbing for being played as reminiscence….. a performance of scorching intensity (without conductor).." The Independent

PERFORMANCES OF 20TH CENTURY CLASSICS WIDELY REGARDED AS DEFINITIVE

PIERROT LUNAIRE (Schoenberg) with Nash Ensemble/Rattle Chandos CHAN6534

'Manning seems to me to get closer to Schoenberg's bizarre, elusive vocal delivery than her rivals.., it is only now that we have the 'light and ironic' reading the composer desired'.The Gramophone

'Jane Manning is on dazzling form, her voice encompassing with complete sureness of touch, an extraordinary variety of colour and histrionic effect, from the mock-portentous to the eerily whimpering... further hearings reveal increasingly the lyrical beauty and expressive intensity of the performance.' Sunday Times.

'She has the necessary beauty of tone for the tender lyricism of no.5.. and she has the control for the passionate solemn farewell-chorale.. And the absolute steadiness of the voice throughout is a joy in music that so often requires immaculate intonation but makes it so difficult to attain...A most distinguished and compelling performance'. The Gramophone

'Jane Manning's fearlessly virtuoso scaling of the peaks of Messiaen's Harawi must be one of the finest things she has done. The sheer expressive range of her performance, once one has got over exclaiming at the technical control of her singing, is remarkable: a hair-raisingly intense experience'. The Gramophone - Critic's Choice .

Boxed 2 CD set: POEMES POUR MI CHANTS DE TERRE ET DE CIEL(Messiaen) with David Mason. and: HARAWI (Messiaen) Forum. FRC 9202

Click on the speaker to hear an extract from Les deux guerriers, Poémes pour Mi, no.7 (Track 7 on CD 1) Real Audio version 3 format.

'Her identification with the songs is complete, and places her with them in a world where alleluias can exist alongside paeans to erotic contentment.' The Times

A historic recording of PIERROT LUNAIRE made in 1967 with the unconducted Vesuvius Ensemble (William Bennett, Thea King, Kenneth Sillito,Charles Tunnell and the late Susan Bradshaw) is now available on FORUM FRC 9106.

"Manning's earliest interpretation of Schoenberg's explosively original cycle of poems for 'reciter' and quintet is hard to surpass for freshness and clarity."
Sunday Times Records of the Year

2007 sees several additions to her discography. Just released is THE STONES AND LONELY PLACES SING (NMC D130) which includes Anthony Payne's settings of Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas, with Jane's Minstrels. Richard Rodney Bennett's virtuosic SPELLS, written for her, has now returned to the catalogue (NMC Ancora D085) , and several of her early recordings of major works by British composers, including, Bedford, Birtwistle, Connolly, Finzi and Maw are about to be re-issued.

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