Karen Mantler

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Karen Mantler (born 25 April 1966, in New York City, New York, United States) [1] is an American jazz pianist, singer, and composer. She is the daughter of musician-composers Carla Bley and Michael Mantler. [2]

Contents

Career

Her musical debut consisted of contributing vocals on Carla Bley's album Escalator Over the Hill (1971) at the age of four, followed by appearing on Bley's Tropic Appetites (1974). She then continued performing and recording on glockenspiel, organ and chromatic harmonica in many of Carla Bley's ensembles and projects from 1977 on to the present.

She studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston on a scholarship from 1985-87. She moved back to New York City in 1987 where she formed her own ensemble to record her first two albums for the XtraWATT record label (distributed by ECM Records), My Cat Arnold (1989) and Karen Mantler and Her Cat Arnold Get the Flu (1990). The band toured Europe several times and also appeared at venues in New York, on David Sanborn's Night Music television show, [3] and at the Montreal International Jazz Festival (1991). She recorded two more albums of her music, Farewell (XtraWATT, 1996) and Pet Project (Virgin Classics, 2000). In 2003 she collaborated with Robert Wyatt on his album Cuckooland , playing keyboards, singing and contributing three compositions. [4]

She has performed and recorded with a wide variety of musicians including Steve Swallow, Motohiko Hino, Michael Mantler, Terry Adams, Robbie Dupree, Artie Traum, Peter Blegvad, John Greaves, Chris Cutler, Dagmar Krause, Annie Whitehead, Anton Fier's band The Golden Palominos, the Ghost Train Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, [5] and Tony Scherr. She has also been featured in Hal Willner productions. [6]

As well as creating the WATTxtraWATT web site, she has been the designer of every WATT and XtraWATT CD cover and booklet since 2003.

At the same time she has been working with her trio featuring bassist Kato Hideki and multi-instrumentalist Doug Wieselman. Her fifth recording as a leader, entitled Business Is Bad, was released in June 2014 (XtraWATT/14). [7]

In April 2024, Mantler was a guest vocalist with Ghost Train Orchestra and Kronos Quartet performing Moondog repertoire at New York's Town Hall. [8]

Discography

As leader

With Carla Bley

With others

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References

  1. ↑ Mantler, Karen. "Karen Mantler by Karen Mantler" (PDF). WattXtraWatt.com. Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  2. ↑ Carla Bley obituary in New York Times, Oct. 17, 2023
  3. ↑ Karen Mantler performing "I Wanna Be Good" on Night Music, 1990, on YouTube
  4. ↑ Review of Cuckooland at AllAboutJazz.com, December 19, 2003
  5. ↑ Mantler performs with Kronos at New York's Town Hall in 2024
  6. ↑ Williams, K. Leander (July 19, 2018). "Hal Willner: "Amarcord"". The New Yorker.
  7. ↑ Thom Jurek (2014-06-13). "Business Is Bad - Karen Mantler | Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 2014-08-26.
  8. ↑ Kronos Quartet and Ghost Train Orchestra Play Moondog at TownHall.org
  9. ↑ Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog at GhostTrainOrchestra.com
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