Coffeehouse Chronicles #186: Harry Mann

Harry’s work in both theater and dance focused on utilizing the visual aspects of musicians and musical instruments (i.e. musicians as characters and image; instruments as objects) in exploring ways to liberate music from its traditional roles.

Harry has been performing as a jazz musician since the early 1960’s. He began his decades-long work collaborating with theater and dance creators in 1977, when he first appeared in Sam Shepherd’s “Suicide in B Flat” at the Magic Theater in San Francisco. Since moving to New York City in1980, Harry has performed at a vast array of seminal experimental theater venues including La Mama, The Public Theater, Theater for the New City, and others. Harry continued his work as a musician in the jazz ensembles of Jack Byard, Cecil Taylor, Ray Charles, and Butch Morris along with the duo Gorilla My Love with Neal Kirkwood. He has performed and composed for (among others) Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaiken, Ann Bogart, The Talking Band, Roy Hart Theatre (France), Dance Theater of Toronto (Terrill Maguire), Wendy Osserman, the Yoshiko Chuma Dance Company, choreographers Anne Hammel and Eva Dean, Richard Lewis’s Touchstone Children’s Theater, the Puppet Theaters of Ralph Lee and Janie Geiser, and Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem,Pennsylvania.

Harry’s decades-long work in performance and composition was deeply influenced by collaborators Skip LaPlante and Ellen Maddow. Harry is also fortunate for the inspiration and love of his family: partner Cora Hook and daughter Ella Hook.