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 Mr. Mann is a faculty member in the College for the following department(s) and division(s):
| Telephone | 212-749-2802 x7990 |
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ROBERT MANN, violinist, conductor, and composer, has been a driving force in the world of American chamber music for more than fifty years. As founder and first violinist of the celebrated Juilliard String Quartet, as soloist, and as composer and teacher, Mr. Mann has brought a refreshing sense of adventure and discovery to chamber music performance in this country. He is, in the words of Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe, “one of the country’s most admired and deeply loved musicians.”
Mr. Mann’s retirement from the Juilliard String Quartet, at the end of the 1996–97 season, now allows him to devote a larger share of his time to composing and solo performance, pursuits that were necessarily subordinate to his role as first violinist with the Quartet.
Born in 1920 in Portland, Oregon, Mr. Mann began studying violin when he was nine and at age 13 was accepted into the class of Edouard Hurlimann, concertmaster of the Portland Symphony. In 1938, he moved to New York City to enroll in Juilliard, where he studied violin with Edouard Dethier, composition with Bernard Wagenaar and Stephan Wolpe, and conducting with Edgar Schenkman. Mr. Mann won the prestigious Naumburg Competition in 1941 and made his New York debut two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Shortly after graduation from Juilliard, he was drafted into the army.
At the invitation of Juilliard’s president, William Schuman, Robert Mann formed the Juilliard String Quartet in 1946 and served as the ensemble’s first violinist until his retirement from the Quartet. The Quartet, which celebrated its golden jubilee during the 1996–97 season, had played approximately 5,000 concerts and performed more thanr 600 works, including some 100 premieres. Its discography includes recordings of more than 100 compositions.
The Juilliard String Quartet succeeded the Budapest Quartet as the resident string quartet at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Mr. Mann played at the Library for more than twenty-seven years. During Mr. Mann’s quartet years, the Juilliard received three Grammy awards for their recordings.
His solo discography includes Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata, the Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano, and Contrasts; Beethoven’s and Brahms’s complete violin sonatas (with pianist Stephen Hough); many of Mozart’s violin sonatas (with pianist Yefim Bronfmann); and Elliott Carter’s Duo for Violin and Piano (with pianist Christopher Oldfather). Mr. Mann’s compositions have been performed by Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, Itzhak Perlman, Joel Krosnick, Gilbert Kalish, and the LaSalle and Concord String Quartets. He has composed more than 30 works for narrator and music, often performed with his wife, actress Lucy Rowan.
Mr. Mann has conducted throughout his professional career, leading ensembles including concerts at Tanglewood and the New York Chamber Symphony in a series of summer concerts in Central Park. In addition, each summer, at the invitation of Seiji Ozawa, he attends Japan’s Saito Kinen Music Festival in Matsumoto, Japan as a conductor, teacher, and performer. Mr. Mann is a mentor to younger generations of string players including the Alexander, American, Concord, Emerson, LaSalle, New World, Mendelssohn, Tokyo, Brentano, Lark, St. Lawrence, and Colorado string quartets. He is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and teaches regularly at Tanglewood. In 2000, he was honored as Artist Teacher of the Year by the American String Teachers’ Association.
Mr. Mann’s daughter, Lisa, is a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. His son, Nicholas, a violinist and violist with whom Mr. Mann often plays duo recitals, is a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet and teaches at Juilliard. Mr. Mann has a passion for backpacking in wilderness areas, particularly in the Rocky Mountains, and enjoys sharing this time camping with his son and grandson.
In recognition of his distinguished contributions to the arts, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 1996. Mr. Mann has served as president of the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation since 1971 and is a former member of the New York Philharmonic board of trustees and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Manhattan School of Music faculty member since 2006.
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