Sasha Johnson Manning

Born in Manchester, England, Sasha Johnson Manning trained in voice and cello at the Royal Academy of Music, where she also studied composition with Roger Steptoe. After some years in London, Johnson Manning returned to the north west of England, to work freelance as a performer and teacher. She is currently on the faculty of Withington School, and is a member of The Britten Singers (formerly the BBC Northern Singers) with whom she has made numerous broadcasts and recordings, both as a soloist and as an ensemble singer. She sings each week for BBC Radio Four's Daily Service, which she sometimes directs. She has also made recordings for a wide variety of radio and television programs in Britain, on the Continent, and in Israel. Johnson Manning is also the director of music at St. Mary's Parish Church in Bowdon, England. Gradually her music has gained a wider audience outside of England through several commissions, especially from the St. Louis Chamber Chorus (St. Louis, Missouri). For this choir she is writing a series of pieces which will ultimately comprise a large-scale, unaccompanied Requiem. Four movements have already been premiered. She has also written for the same choir Four Shakespearean Songs concerts in May 2001 and October 2004, and Mary Magdalen premiered November 2001. Johnson Manning has several commissions for liturgical music including motets, anthems, Christmas carols, responses and canticle settings. Other settings of the canticles and the mass have been performed at various times in the cathedrals of Norwich, Wells, Winchester, Worcester, and at York Minster. Other non-liturgical pieces include a series of 'jingles' for BBC Radio Five, a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra which was recently performed in Manchester's Bridgewater Hall, and various compositions performed in the Royal Albert Hall and other university recital halls. Johnson Manning has also written a series of primer pieces for beginner instrumentalists, and several musicals for children; her most recent commission for Withington School, entitled 2001 Space Iliad. Finally, as a singer herself, Johnson Manning has particularly enjoyed writing solo songs, and has composed both sacred and secular pieces with a variety of accompaniments. As a soprano soloist, Johnson Manning's extensive oratorio repertoire ranges from Monteverdi's Vespers to Francis Poulenc's Gloria. She has toured Germany with the Academy of St. Martin's-in-the-fields singing Haydn's Creation, and has similarly toured Holland and Belgium with the guitarist Paco Peña, singing his Missa Flamenca. Johnson Manning has also performed with the Deller Consort in concerts in France and Germany, and was a soloist with them in a production of Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, presented in Turin and Sicily, and more recently in Bèthune, broadcast by French television. In England Johnson Manning has sung with countertenor Michael Chance at the Stour Music Festival, and has recently sung in performances of Bach's Mass in B Minor, Haydn's Creation and Saint-Saëns's Requiem. She has performed and recorded works by Henry Purcell with the Orchestra of the Golden Age, and made guest appearances with the early music group Musical Offering, in works by Handel, Purcell, Scarlatti and Telemann.