Michael Lawrence Manion (1952-2012) was a percussionist and American composer of electroacoustical music. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan to Sgt. Major Harry Manion and Floy Manion, Michael studied percussion from a young age. Prior to earning his Bachelor of Music degree in composition and percussion performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1977, Manion played drums in the Grand Rapids Youth Orchestra as well as several local rock and jazz bands. At Oberlin, he studied composition and percussion with Randolph Coleman, Dary John Mizelle, Darlene Dougan, and Gary Lee Nelson. After graduating, Manion traveled to California to study with Robert Ashley at Mills for one year.
Manion earned his Master of Music in composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983, studying with Salvatore Martirano and Ben Johnston. During his time at the University of Illinois, Manion composed for the performance collective called Roulette, which was comprised of Illinois graduate students Camilla Hoitenga and John Fonville (flutes); Jim Staley and Bob Gale (trombones); and several composers including Dan Senn, David Means, and Robert Fleisher. Following their work together in Roulette, Hoitenga and Manion travelled to Köln, Germany together in the summer of 1980. Manion soon sought lessons with Mauricio Kagel at the Musikhochschule Köln. Although Hoitenga had begun working with Karlheinz Stockhausen--performing his first solo piece for flute at an international competition in Rotterdam in 1980-- and despite Manion desperately wanting to study with him, Hoitenga was unsuccessful in putting Manion in contact with Stockhausen. After Hoitenga and Manion separated in 1981, Manion returned to the states for a year. He eventually met Stockhausen on his own during a 1982 composition course in Den Haag. Between 1984 and 1987 Manion served as Stockhausen's copyist, editing such works Kindheit, Nausenflugeltanz, Wochenkreis, and Madchenprozession.
As he was working with Stockhausen, Manion began studying with Jonathan Harvey at the Univeristy of Sussex. In 1986, Manion co-founded Gimik: Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln, a performance collective, with Clarence Barlow and several other German composers. Gimik was responsible for hosting the 14th International Computer Music Conference in Köln, municipal concert series and lectures in 1991 and 1995, and a summer residency at the Darmstadt Summer Courses in 1992. Manion performed regularly with Gimik at Feedback Studio near Köln's town hall, establishing networks for computer music and supporting both lectures and concerts of new music throughout Europe. Manion later served as the curator of a Gimik retrospective that took place during the International Computer Music Conference in Berlin in 2000.
In August 2001, Manion joined the composer Dennis Bathory-Kitsz at the Ought-One Festival in Montpellier, Vermont. Dubbed the "Woodstock of Non-Pop," the festival featured music compositions by Larry Austin, Clarence Barlow, Kyle Gann, Larry Polansky, and Kaija Saariaho and was dedicated to Barlow. During the festival, Manion performed Bathory-Kitsz's composition RatGeyser for malletKAT and electronic sounds, as well as his own composition Long Roll II.
Throughout the late 1990s, Manion performed regularly in jazz jam sessions with performers like Arjen Gorter (bass) and Sean Bergin (saxophone) at De Engelbewaarder Cafe in Amsterdam. Maion's composition and performance career stopped suddently in 2008, after he died of a stroke.
Sources:Camilla Hoitenga interview with the Sousa Archives 2025.
Kalvos Radio Archive, Manion Biography: https://kalvos.org/manionm.html.
Michael Manion Obituary, online at: https://obits.mlive.com/us/obituaries/grandrapids/name/michael-manion-obituary?id=20498752
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