Earl Maneein

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Earl Maneein is a violinist and composer who loves nothing more than to lend his considerable chops as a classically trained musician to the sounds and venues of heavy metal and hardcore punk. None other than Robert Trujillo, bassist for Metallica, has called him “a kick-ass artist who pushes the creative boundaries.”

Earl received a Bachelor of Music from Queens College and a Master of Music from the Mannes College of Music, where he studied with Daniel Phillips of the Orion String Quartet. He is the founder of and main composer for the string quartet SEVEN)SUNS, which plays both extant and new metal and hardcore work, and he is also a member of the Vitamin String Quartet, whose recent music was featured in the Netflix show “Bridgerton.”

As a composer Earl has received commissions from a broad array of individuals and institutions, from internationally renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine and pioneering hardcore band The Dillinger Escape to Plan to Dance Theater of Harlem and The Phoenix Symphony, helmed by past “Art Restart” guest Tito Muñoz.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Earl describes how, knowing that he was never going to want to play in a traditional orchestra, he nevertheless challenged himself to get a classical-violin education so that he could craft his singular artistic identity with absolute confidence.

Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

Pier Carlo Talenti: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your artistry. Which came first, your love of metal or of the violin?

Earl Maneein: I guess violin first. At least for me, I did not have a choice in the matter, but I ended up really loving it. My parents kind of put me in at four with the Cracker Jack box and the dowel. You don’t really have a choice. It’s one of these things. With a bunch of kids, there’s this attrition, right? All these kids end up hating it and quit, and I actually didn’t. I really loved it, so I stuck with it.

And I discovered metal when I was — oh, God, how old was I? — in sixth grade or fifth grade when some kid passed me a tape of, I think, "Master of Puppets." And also it’s the neighborhood I grew up into, but that’s a little later. I think Metallica came first, and then in my neighborhood it was all underground hardcore-punk shows. All my friends, we went to these all-ages shows in VFW halls and church basements and stuff.

Pier Carlo: I’m guessing that as you were studying the violin, you were playing a classical repertoire and you were going to hear these punk bands on your own. At what point did you think, “Hey, wait a minute, I can bring my violin skills to this genre”?

Earl: That’s an interesting question, man, because I think the real realization, like “I am going to draw on that as a large part of my artistic face or identity,” that didn’t come until way later. Way later.

I definitely was playing violin and figuring out Slayer solos and Metallica solos in high school and just kind of trying to figure it out, like, “Oh, hey look, this is the solo from ‘Orion’ on the violin,” kind of a thing. But also remember this is 1990, [he laughs] so it just didn’t occur to me at all. It was just two very schizophrenic, separate worlds.

I had my friends that were hardcore kids and metalheads. Because also I came up at the time when metal and punk used to hate each other. Nobody really remembers this anymore, I think. Metalheads and punks used to totally hate each other. Violent fights would break out at shows. I was the first generation where it was starting to kind of come together. There was this crossover where punk bands would use metal riffs and they would still totally have a DIY punk ethic.

There was another thing. I heard a thing on NPR the other day where I was like, “Oh, my God, that dude nailed it!” He was a part of the queer punk scene in Washington State, and he was talking about how metal is more anger-outward and punk is more anger-inward. I thought that was pretty on-point. A lot of metal is like, “I’m a God. Worship me, look at my guitar solo, I’m so awesome” virtuosic kind of a thing, which has its parallels with certain aspects of classical violin-playing, interestingly enough.

Punk is more like, 'I suffer, and I know you suffer. Let’s suffer together.' It’s a more personal kind of expression, a 'we’re all the same' kind of a thing. It’s much more egalitarian in that way. ... The performer and the audience blend into one.

Punk is more like, “I suffer, and I know you suffer. Let’s suffer together.” It’s a more personal kind of expression, a “we’re all the same” kind of a thing. It’s much more egalitarian in that way. “We are coming together to express this feeling together.” The performer and the audience blend into one. It’s this communal experience in punk. And metal is more the performer is on the stage and is a god or a goddess.

Pier Carlo: And so which of the two were you? You said you were going to both. Was there one, whether in terms of your taste or your playing, that you were more naturally drawn to?

Earl: I think because I grew up in the crossover I’ve always been much more at heart a punk in terms of this communal ... . I’ve never liked the more extreme aspects of showmanship for the sake of showmanship, regardless of genre. I don’t like Yngwie Malmsteen; I don’t like DragonForce. I don’t like these bands, Dream Theater, that are like Monday in the space of Tuesday and Thursday for no reason.

And similarly I don’t like violinists who do this either. I don’t like Heifetz, actually. I don’t like these players that are like, “Look how awesome I am,” with nothing to say. I love virtuosity, but I want a reason if that makes any sense.

Pier Carlo: We’re going to totally going to come back to that: the reason.

Earl: Yeah, the reason!

Pier Carlo: You say it came much later, this idea of bringing your violin skills to this genre. When did that happen? Because you have many years of training, right?

Earl: Yeah, unfortunately. [He laughs.]

So I was in a hippie band. I dropped out of school. I dropped out of undergrad my junior year, and then I toured the country with this jam band that was so not metal at all. I did that, but I convinced the guys —

Pier Carlo: Was that your first professional violin gig?

Earl: I guess so.

Pier Carlo: So it was a big deal.

Earl: We were paid for it, and we were D-minus-famous level, like there were hordes of hippies there. So yeah. And we were paid for it. So yeah. You know what? It never occurred to me to think of it that way, but yeah, sure.

So I was playing the violin in this rock band, and I learned a lot. I really learned a lot, but it wasn’t metal. It was so far from the scene that I grew up in, and I had fallen into it because of friends that I had in college. I just kind of went along with it. But I remember convincing the guys who were not metalheads to play “War Pigs,” the Black Sabbath song. I had a five-string violin at the time — now I have a seven because I realized I wanted lower ranges —and I was playing everything an octave above Tony Iommi but it still kind of made sense. I was doing the riffs, and we got a great reception when we would cover the song. And I loved it. I think that was the first inkling of that, “Hey, I can actually riff on a violin. I know all the riffs. I’ve listened to it since I was a baby basically, and I know them, so why not?” That was the first inkling.

Then later on when I graduated, when I got out of grad school, I think that’s when I really started doing it.

Pier Carlo: That’s interesting. So you’re playing in this hippie jam band, you are starting to really think about using your skills towards the genre that you like, and then you finish your schooling and you go to grad school. Why did you go to grad school? What were you hoping to keep learning in grad school?

Earl: I wanted to hone my technique. How do I explain this? I’m one of those kids. You know how some teachers … ? Everybody has different gifts; everybody has different strengths. I think I had spent a long time relying on native ... . It sounds so arrogant, but I’m going to go ahead and say it: I never really had to struggle learning the violin. I was just kind of good, always. It sounds terrible, but that’s just how it is. I was always rather good, and I never really worked at it.

If you’re really trying to go for a certain thing that you’re really passionate about, where you hear it and you really want to do the job right, I think ultimately, no matter who you are, there’s a moment where you kind of have to buckle down and work.

The truth is that because you have native ability, you can go so far and then you can kind of lean on it. But if you really want something, ultimately, I think, you’re going to have to work, no matter what your native ability is. If you’re really trying to go for a certain thing that you’re really passionate about, where you hear it and you really want to do the job right, I think ultimately, no matter who you are, there’s a moment where you kind of have to buckle down and work.

Pier Carlo: So what were you going for?

Earl: I wanted to not feel restricted in my instrument. I think I was getting to a point when I was in the jam band and while I was doing these things that it didn’t really take too much skill toll or psychic toll on me. I don’t know if I’m saying it right. I never really had to work too hard, you know what I mean? But at the same time, could I toss off Paganini 24 with no effort? The answer is no. And I wanted to get there. I wanted that skill, and I was like, “You know what? Now it’s time to cut the crap, and it’s time to work.”

So that’s why I wanted to go back to grad school, because I wanted to really be brutally, brutally honest in terms of where my skill was and what I wanted.

Pier Carlo: Was the entirety of your grad school education in the classical repertoire? In other words, I’m curious about whether grad schools at the time, or even now, include different genres and styles of playing.

Earl: No.

Pier Carlo: They don’t.

Earl: Grad school was all entirely classical music, which I didn’t mind because I kind of figured that the pinnacle of an understanding of technique on the violin was to be had in studying Western European classical-violin playing.

I’m not really entirely sure that’s true anymore, but at the time, that was my thinking, that this was brought to its technical peak by all these guys: Viotti, Paganini, and then going through to Galamian and then Leopold Auer, all these names and all these guys, unfortunately, all men. There are not enough women that are represented, aside from ... you have Ida Haendel, and now there are more, which is great.

I think in my mind at the time it was, “Western European classical music represents the pinnacle of violin-playing technique, and I want to really not fool myself and really learn it. Really, really learn and deeply understand it”.

Pier Carlo: I imagine the technique of playing on a seven-string electric violin is very different than a regular acoustic violin. Did you have to teach yourself that technique?

Earl: Yes, but they’re all still related. So there’s this one thing that I do that I’ve talked about previously in other podcasts. It’s a metal riffing kind of a technique that basically I can do and not many people can. When they see it, they’re like, “I don’t understand what that is.” But it’s still just a sort of Franco-Belgian bow hold on steroids. It’s not a brand-new thing. It was just this amplified, if that makes any sense.

But it’s become a different thing. That’s true, Pier. It’s definitely a different technique, but I could still draw clearly the delineation, the family tree. It’s not a thing that exists in and of itself.

Pier Carlo: Do you yourself teach?

Earl: Yeah, I do. I only have three students at the moment.

Pier Carlo: So if you have a student who wants to have a career like yours, playing across genres, would you still insist that they have to get a fundamental classical education?

Earl: [He chuckles.] Yeah, I think I would. I think I’m oddly secretly old-school in that way. I would, because I think all of the techniques that I’ve figured out, like I said, come from the same family tree that’s entirely related.

Actually that is maybe a little bit of a beef I’ve had. This is only my point of view. By the way, Pier, I have friends with wildly different points of views where this particular thing is concerned. I feel that one of the big so-called problems of crossover music is that too many people kind of use it … . They can’t play Mendelssohn, and then they go and say, “OK, well, I can’t make a career doing this, but I’m going to just ... .” They don’t come to the other thing naturally.

Pier Carlo: You mean then the other thing is a default because they couldn’t excel at the first thing?

Earl: Right.

Pier Carlo: OK.

Earl: Right. I don’t know if I’m right. [He laughs.] Like I said I’ve definitely had heated conversations with good, close friends about this, so I’m fully aware that what I’m expressing is a somewhat like, “Really, dude?” kind of opinion.

Pier Carlo: What kind of career had you envisioned for yourself when you were starting out?

Earl: I didn’t.

Pier Carlo: You didn’t?

Earl: I didn’t. All I knew was I definitely did not want to be an orchestra player.

Pier Carlo: Oh!

Earl: Oh, my God, that was one of the most painful, hateful experiences.

Pier Carlo: But then you’re in grad school, and I’m guessing that most of your fellow students wanted to be orchestral players probably. And all your teachers were. So how did you keep a level head through that process, knowing that that wasn’t your goal?

Earl: Well, I was older already, Pier. So remember I was touring the country with this hippie jam band, and by the time I started grad school, I was 24. So to me now, as a 45-year-old dude, that sounds like, “Oh, what a baby, cutie pie. Oh, a cutie pie. The 24-year-old. Oh, that’s cute!” But I was already a little older than a lot of my peers in grad school, and I already had seen a lot and I knew exactly what I wanted.

I even made a little checklist. I think I wrote it down somewhere. I was like, “Really, really, really understand intimately violin technique. What are your goals in grad school?” It was a really, really, really silly list. I think it came down to three things. It came down to: Hone your technique mercilessly, have a good time and make a lot of friends, and make out with a lot of girls. I think those were my three goals.

Pier Carlo: And you were able to check all three, I presume?

Earl: All three.

Pier Carlo: All right.

Earl: Yeah, so it all worked out. [He laughs.]

Pier Carlo: I love that you had making a lot of friends on your list. You’ve created at least two bands, and for that you have to know how to bring together collaborators, right?

Earl: Yeah. Yes. I think my main beef with orchestral playing is that ... . Again, I’m open to the idea that other people have had wildly different experiences than mine, but I’ve always thought my orchestral experiences were always kind of uptight in a certain way. If there was friendship-making, it was always outside of the context of the rehearsal. I’m not saying that, “Oh yeah, you can’t be friends with people in orchestra.” That’s not true; that’s obviously not true. But just in terms of the vibe, an orchestra rehearsal is fairly joyless, at least in my experience.

Pier Carlo: If you could play in any kind of venue, what would be your dream venue?

Earl: I think it would be two extreme venues. I’ve always loved the super-intimate ... . A lot of hardcore shows happen in kids’ basements, like, “Oh, my parents are not here. Let’s go have a party.” And then they get the band and then they get crammed in the basement and it’s a four-by-six area and the crowd is literally on top of you and it’s a sweat box and probably a fire hazard and all those kinds of things. I really love that. Really, really, really love that feeling. The show at its best is like one organism.

Like I said, there’s no clear delineation between the audience and the performer. The crowd often will know all the lyrics, will oftentimes just take the mic from the singer. And everybody’s just yelling the whole thing and there’s no real divide and it’s a shared experience. Everybody’s literally on top of you and I really love that.

So I think for me it’s the extremes. I don’t know, man. I like them all. I like playing.

But I also love ... . My hippie band had played the Guinness Fleadh Festival on Randall’s Island, and being in front of 60,000 people is a crazy experience too. That’s amazing also. So I think for me it’s the extremes. I don’t know, man. I like them all. I like playing. [He laughs.]

Pier Carlo: When did you realize you had composing talent?

Earl: I guess I was always writing. I was writing for my band. I was even writing for the hippie band, but that was a little difficult because I’m not a jam-band guy naturally. So that was a little weird, writing nice major songs, that pentatonic major. But I did; I wrote a couple. But I was writing tunes even in my high school. I had a high school punk band called Dogs Without Fur, and me and my buddy wrote a supremely stupid song called “Cookie Monster Eats Cookies,” because it’s the most redundant thing. I was definitely writing things in high school and whatever.

Rachel Barton Pine asked me to write. She was a fan of my metal band that I had started after graduate school, Resolution 15, and we all knew her because she’s — I use the word conditionally — famous. I don’t really know what famous means anymore, but within classical music, she’s a famous violinist. I didn’t know she knew me, but she was secretly a fan of my band. She cold-called me one day, having gotten my number from a friend of a friend of a friend, and asked me if I would write her a solo piece, sort of Ysaÿe-inspired. Coming from the histories of Ysaÿe and Bach, would I write her a kind of extreme or heavy-music-inspired solo-violin piece?

The thing [my father] taught me was that you’re either going to learn fast and you have a job, or you don’t learn fast enough and you get fired. Right now you don’t have a job, so just say yes and figure it out.

I’m the kind of guy who just says yes, even though I’m not really sure I can do it. I learned that from my father. My father came from Thailand. He was an Air Force sergeant in Thailand. He was not trained as a cook, but he came here and he got a job at a diner. The whole thing was that he went in there, and they went, “Do you know how to cook?” and he went, “Yes.” The thing he taught me was that you’re either going to learn fast and you have a job, or you don’t learn fast enough and you get fired. Right now you don’t have a job, so just say yes and figure it out.

Pier Carlo: So you learned fast and composed. How long did it take you to compose that first piece?

Earl: About a month, throwing ideas out there and then throwing it away. And then trying it out myself and then hating it and then throwing it away. All that stuff.

Pier Carlo: And is this a piece that Rachel was planning to perform in concert venues, concert halls?

Earl: Yes, completely within the precedence of Ysaÿe, so more on the classical side of things. That’s kind of where my music stands. I ended up writing a violin concerto for her too of the same kind of feel where I didn’t incorporate any kind of extra stuff. There’s no like, “Oh, we need to bring in an expert. We need to bring in a drummer or we need to bring in pedals or incorporate more modern things.” The piece that I wrote for her could be played in 1920 but with a punk feel, the aggression, some of the musical language that I felt could translate.

Pier Carlo: We like to talk about systemic changes on this podcast. What do you think could or should change from the educational to the professional level to make it easier for cross-genre musicians like you to thrive?

Earl: Oh, God, that’s a great question, man. That’s actually an argument that I got into with my wife. Not really an argument but a heated discussion. My original stance was [puts on an old-man voice], “These conservators don’t teach squat,” if you can envision the old man on the rocking chair, the whole “Get off my lawn!” kind of thing. “They don’t teach them about EQ-ing. They don’t need teach them about recording.”

I had said I was really annoyed that when the pandemic happened, I got all these sudden messages from people, like, “I borrowed this Neumann microphone, and I don’t know where to plug it into my violin.” And you go, “Dude, really?” So I was like, “Well, schools should teach that sort of thing.” All this bitching about stuff.

And then my wife was like: “A solid liberal-arts education should make it so you don’t need any of that specific ... . You’re not going to Apex Tech; you’re not learning to be a mechanic. Maybe it’s more important that people are learning how to be inquisitive, how to be more open-minded and ask the right questions so that when they enter a situation that is foreign to them, they have the critical thinking skills to figure it out themselves.”

I thought what she said was actually pretty awesome.

Pier Carlo: But who won the argument, do you think?

Earl: I think the answer is in the middle.

Well, having thought of it, it’s neither this nor that, I think. I kind of moved back from my earlier assertion that “They should be teaching this, they should be teaching this, they should be teaching this.” But on the other hand, I would like to see conservatories — it’s funny because it’s inherent in the word — be less conservative.

When I was at school, I wanted to take a jazz class, and I was actually not allowed to, which I thought was super-weird and interesting. Not Queens College. When I was at grad school, when I was at Mannes.

Pier Carlo: It is interesting because I think jazz is America’s classical music.

Earl: It totally is. It’s also in a box, and it’s a museum piece also. It’s no longer dangerous or vital either, I think. So you’re right. But I just only use that as an example of a class I couldn’t even take.

Pier Carlo: What about professionally, in terms people who book music, orchestra halls, music venues? Is there anything that could change so that there could be more fluidity for musicians?

Earl: Oh, man, absolutely, but so much of that depends on the tastemakers, right?

Pier Carlo: And who are they? Who are the tastemakers?

Earl: The ones who book the halls. Who runs National Sawdust? Who runs The Cell? Who runs X, Y, and Z venue?

I’ll say this: SEVEN)SUNS, my quartet, got no love in the modern classical-music venues. I had sent out stuff, like, “Hey, we’d love to play at your venue, and hook us up with X,” what I had thought were other new-music groups. And I got totally shut down. The only place where my group found love was in the metal community actually, so we just went where we were wanted. We did a whole bunch of shows at Saint Vitus or The Acheron or whatever, just these places where it was really usually just punks and metalheads. We got a lot of love from that community, so we just kind of went with that community. We’re kind of the weird but loved stepchild there. [He laughs.]

The only support we have in the more classical community is from Tribeca New Music Festival, the new-music scene, the downtown scene. There is some love there, but generally we don’t have that love. I would love to see that boundary come down, but I don’t know how much of that is personal. I don’t know how much of that is those people simply don’t like our music, which they have every right not to.

Pier Carlo: You mentioned the pandemic earlier. It clearly proved that the life of a professional musician can be particularly precarious. What did it teach you about what might change to make it less precarious?

Earl: I think what helped me personally during the pandemic and I know helped other people too was the ability to remote-record. I mentioned the person who didn’t know what to do with a Neumann before, but other people did know. I know a lot of my friends and colleagues got good work and were able to stay afloat when everything shut down because it’s not like the human need for music goes away; it has to get diverted into other things.

So maybe there were more TV shows that needed backing, needed a horn or needed whatever. Whatever musical input, they needed that. My wife and I were really saved through a big remote-recording job. We did this Netflix show, “Waffles + Mochi.” We did the whole season just in my studio here at home.

Pier Carlo: You scored the whole show from your home studio?

Earl: I didn’t score it. We were given MIDIs of string lines, and I had to transcribe them just by ear because it’s not worth it to sit there with the paper. The deadlines are too fast. I guess that’s a skillset, right?

Pier Carlo: Yes, definitely.

Earl: You had to hear what was going on and just replicate it. There’s no time to sit there with [music-notation software] Sibelius and write down what it was. You just had to hear it, record it six times in a row so it sounds a whole orchestra and then move onto the next thing.

I know that saved me and my wife. I was really freaked out. I remember, the mortgage was continuing to come, but my jobs weren’t, so when that job came in, that was a real lifesaver.

I definitely know friends of mine had very similar experiences where the ones who knew how to remote-record, the ones who knew how to adapt into this brave new world ended up doing OK.

Pier Carlo: It makes me think that some of that ought to be taught in school. In fact, for this podcast I interviewed Enrique Marquéz, the music director at Interlochen. Those high-school students are learning big-time classical technique, but there’s also a recording studio and they learn how to do everything you’re talking about.

Earl: I love that.

Pier Carlo: Isn’t that amazing?

Earl: That’s amazing. That makes me so happy that they learn how to record that because it just gives you more tools.

Technology is constantly changing. It’s always new, so you can’t make this dogmatic, formulaic program that addresses the needs of specifically 2022 because it’ll be obsolete in five years. ... But there’s a middle ground too. So all the kids knowing how to record themselves, that’s beautiful. That’s how it should be.

Yeah, there is that middle ground. Because also, the point that my wife had brought up, which I thought really resonated and I kind of walked back my earlier thought, is that technology is constantly changing. It’s always new, so you can’t make this dogmatic, formulaic program that addresses the needs of specifically 2022 because it’ll be obsolete in five years. There’s going to be some new stuff that comes out that’s amazing, and all the stuff that you learned in your class is going to be obsolete.

But there’s a middle ground too. So all the kids knowing how to record themselves, that’s beautiful. That’s how it should be.

Pier Carlo: Imagine that you’re about to receive a significant no-strings-attached commission. What do you think you’d compose and where would you like it to be premiered?

Earl: A significant no-strings-attached commission.

Pier Carlo: And it can be premiered anywhere in any type of venue anywhere in the world.

Earl: Oh, man, OK. And I could bring friends into it?

Pier Carlo: Yes.

Earl: OK. So I almost had it, but I think because of the pandemic and all this stuff and real life, it is not going to happen. But I already almost had my dream thing, so I’ll just say this.

I think I would like to write ... I’m not clear on what it would be. It would be maybe a 45-minute musical — I hate the word, but I don’t have a better one right now — journey. [Laughing] What a terrible word. I hate that word so much, but whatever. That, incorporating a symphonic orchestra but also incorporating my friend, the drummer of the band Meshuggah, Tomas Haake. Him and my friend Jess Pimentel — she’s an actress — and spoken word and electric violins, just a whole big work that incorporates extreme music and classical music but not in the way that they’ve done it in the past. Metallica’s “S&M” I thought was amazing for what it was, but it was basically just a metal band piled on top of orchestra.

I would have it so that neither could exist without the other. It would be a completely integrated piece of music where it all depended on everything else. And I would love to premiere that at Hellfest and then also the Royal Albert Hall. That’s a little bit random, but that would be the, “Whoa, that’s super cool,” kind of a thing.

March 14, 2022