McManus, Jill

McManus, Jill, jazz pianist, composer, author; b. Englewood, N.J., July 28, 1940. She incorporates Hopi themes into her music, as well as those of related Pueblo groups such as the Zuni nation. Her family moved to N.Y. when she was about six months old and to Westport, Conn., when she was about five years old where she studied at the Westport School of Music. She became interested in jazz while attending Wellesley Coll. She then moved to N.Y. where she studied jazz in the 1960s with John Mehegan at his studio. Around 1970, she also studied with Roland Hanna. McManus began as a reporter for Time in 1963, writing music stories and record reviews through 1971.

By 1974, she was leading the Jazz Sisters in concerts around the N.Y. area, including Town Hall in 1977 and a CBS-TV appearance. She began teaching privately in 1975 (through 1995), and from 1978 to 1980, she substituted for Kenny Barron when he was unavailable to teach at Rutgers Univ. In 1980, she led all-female groups at Symphony Space in N.Y. (the N.Y. salute to Woman in Jazz (also 1979, 1981, 1985)) and at the Women’s Jazz Festival in Kansas City. She played with Pepper Adams from 1980 to 1981. In the summer of 1980, she traveled to N.Mex. where she had a life-changing experience attending a rain ceremony and meeting Hopi song composers. She returned every summer for over ten years, teaching in Santa Fe from 1982 to 1985. Her pieces have been recorded by Red Rodney and Rein DeGraaff, and she wrote the soundtrack to the documentary In the Spirit of Haystack. She taught at Mannes Coll. of Music (N.Y.) from 1981–91, while continuing to lead groups around N.Y. and England (1981, 1983, 1987, 1990, 1992, and 1997), though with less frequency in the late 1990s.

Discography

As One (1977); Symbols of Hopi (1983); Broadcast, Piano Jazz (1992); Broadcast, BBC Women’s Hour ( 1992).

—Lewis Porter