Twenty-Four Poems, by Abe Maneri and Joe Maneri

Twenty-Four Poems

by Abe Maneri and Joe Maneri

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Prayers in Transit, Close Walking, Outsider/Insider, Piano and Voice -- Songs by David Bowie, Twenty-Four Poems, In a Quiet Way, Through Time, American Improvisations, and 7 more. , and , .

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1.	Poem #1 02:13	info	buy track
2.	Poem #2 (With Mat Maneri) 01:51	info	buy track
3.	Poem #3 01:05	info	buy track
4.	Poem #4 01:26	info	buy track
5.	Poem #5 01:08	info	buy track
6.	Poem #6 (With Mat Maneri) 02:49	info	buy track
7.	Poem #7 01:36	info	buy track
8.	Poem #8 01:24	info	buy track
9.	Poem #9 (With Marc Greene) 02:16	info	buy track
10.	Poem #10 00:54	info	buy track
11.	Poem #11 01:06	info	buy track
12.	Poem #12 03:38	info	buy track
13.	Poem #13 01:11	info	buy track
14.	Poem #14 00:49	info	buy track
15.	Poem #15 A & B 02:44	info	buy track
16.	Poem #16 01:23	info	buy track
17.	Poem #17 01:03	info	buy track
18.	Poem #18 (With Mat Maneri) 01:43	info	buy track
19.	Poem #19 (With Don Sandeen) 00:57	info	buy track
20.	Poem #20 (Tom Jameson and Ben Jaffe) 03:32	info	buy track
21.	Poems 21 & 22 (With Marc Greene) 04:36	info	buy track
22.	Poem #23 02:01	info	buy track
23.	Poem #24 (With Mat Maneri) 05:47	info	buy track

about

My dad, Joe Maneri, was always interested in writing. He had trouble learning to read, and subsequently dropped out of school after 9th grade. Later, he would go to his public library and choose books like you would choose grapefruits or melons. He would pick up a book and smell it, and select the one that seemed ripe. His favorite novel was Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. In the late 1990's, when he was in his seventies, he started writing poetry. He hand-wrote these 24 poems and recorded them on a little black tape recorder, like the kind you used to get at a library. The poems are not meant to be an approximation of meaning through words you can't decipher. Instead, they are more like music. The meaning is something different from what words generally do. In general words attempt to provide something definite, or at least finite. Joe's poems evoke meaning like the way his improvisations did. They compelled you to believe in something, usually spiritual, usually connected to his favorite topic, love. The words, his own language, he called it, was a different kind of language in that sense. Not "another language" rather, an "inner language." His poems are to me on the one hand extremely serious endeavors, while simultaneously comical. I tried to mimic this in my accompaniments. I worked with five of these poems before in my 2011 album "Other English." In those recordings, the poems, for the most part, take a back seat to what I was setting out to do musically. One version, Poem #18, was what I was looking for. So, it reappears on this album, but mixed somewhat differently. On this album, I really wanted to present a simple documentation of the poems as read by Joe, with my music. I reflected on the vast reference points in Joe's music. Those reference points became my reference points as this album begins with a trio of recorders in the style somewhat consistent with Baroque. Later in this album I evoke styles of Jazz, Blues, Modern Classical, Middle Eastern, and of course Free. The duets with Mat Maneri, my brother are something of the "trunk" to the tree that is the whole album. The first three were recorded in my studio, while the last, was recorded live at a remembrance concert for Joe in 2012. Featured twice over three poems is my friend Marc Greene who knew Joe well, and shares his birthday. Sometimes there's a deep connection in Birthday twins as I feel a lot of Joe in Marc, especially when we're playing together. My oldest and closest friend of now over 25 years, Don Sandeen is featured on poem #19. He worked tirelessly over years documenting Joe's life throughout the 90's and beyond. One day, when complete, his documentary will be another great way to view Joe's legacy. And then there's the musicians I've been playing with most regularly. Ben has been my musical champion going back over 20 years now, and Tom, well, he's been a huge part of my existence since we first argued over Mahler more than 10 years ago. On track 20, is this trio of souls playing on what was my birthday back in 2010. That year I got myself a theremin.

So, while this record is a look back on Joe and his poetry, it's a look to now and the music that accompanies on this record. And finally, it is certainly a look forward to the music and poetry I hope to make in the years to come.

credits

released February 9, 2016

Joe Maneri: Poetry

Abe Maneri: Recorders, Keyboards, Guitar, Banjo, Clarinet, Alto Sax, Shenhai, Theramin, Tin Whistle, Cello, and Singing.

Mat Maneri: Viola tracks 2,6,18, and 24
Marc Greene: Bass and Guitar tracks 9 and 21
Don Sandeen: Guitar track 19
Ben Jaffe: Tenor on track 20
Thomas Jameson: Keyboard on track 20.

Reviews of this album:

"I Loved "Twenty-Four Poems"! It's like Schwitters's "Ur-Sonata," but with an actual sonata. The variety of approaches was wonderful, each switch in instrumentation and century suggesting a whole new range of associations ... For example, loved the sort of Segovia guitar, the electric lick, and the way the Modernist piano bagatelle led right into the funeral-parlor organ ... After a while, the cumulative effect is to make the transrational language seem transnational, too, transhuman, issuing out of music halls, dives, and mud huts the world over ... Yet always with this melancholy that runs through the narration and the music itself ... I felt a nostalgia for places I'd never been."

M.T. Anderson (Author of Feed and Octavian Nothing)

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Abe Maneri and the Agnostic Hep Cats image

Abe Maneri and the Agnostic Hep Cats Brooklyn, New York

Abe Maneri has studied music directly and indirectly his whole life; starting out on violin at the age of 4, cello at age 9, piano, recorders, guitar, voice, percussion, and clarinet there after. He has performed with many noted musicians including Joe and Mat Maneri, Jessica Jones, Sabir Mateen, Assif Tsahar and John Medeski. ... more

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