Manning courts her supreme love

“As you’re articulating these thoughts through music, it’s kind of like a search for beauty. You’re expanding, trying to find new horizons. It’s exciting to me.”

By Maria Kantzavelos

On most Monday nights, Blanche M. Manning leaves her gavel and robes behind, picks up her tenor saxophone and lets loose in the well of her federal courtroom.

Courtroom 2125 of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse is where Manning, by day, has been presiding over civil and criminal cases since she joined the federal bench in 1994, a highlight of a long law career she considers a passion.

For one night each week, however, the courtroom becomes one of the many places where the veteran jurist meets up with her first love: music.

At 5 feet tall, an unassuming Manning, strapped to her sax, mixes with lawyers, paralegals, law librarians and others from Chicago’s legal community as an otherwise orderly space is transformed into a frenzied jazz rehearsal hall for the Barristers Big Band.

Manning, 73, is a co-founder of the Barristers, which was formed in 2000. She has also been playing bass clarinet - the instrument of her music roots, which stretch back to high school - with the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra since its early years in the late 1980s.

“There were about five or six of us who were in the symphony orchestra who said, ‘Enough of this classical music all the time. Let’s throw a little jazz in here, too,’ ” Manning said. “Now we play a lot of jazz from the masters, like Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington.”

On a recent rehearsal night in her courtroom in December, Manning and the Barristers were gearing up for a holiday performance at Navy Pier. The judge had already accepted an invitation to play a gig scheduled for that same date at a Maywood club with another ensemble, The Jazzy Ladies. But she was determined to find away to make it to both venues.

“I enjoy playing for audiences. I think I’m a big ham,” Manning said. “For anybody who asks me to play, I usually am there.”

And although the tenor sax is her “major instrument,” there are many others she has come to know well. She plays all the saxophones - the tenor, soprano, alto and, “the big baritone saxophone I cannot lift, but I can sit and play it. It’s bigger than I am.” Then there is the piano, vibraphone and bass guitar.

“I guess that’s about it,” she said. “It takes up half of my living room.”

As a member of about a half-dozen bands and ensembles-some of them associated with the legal community, some not - Manning said she is either rehearsing or performing just about every other night of the week.

She is frequently seen fixed to her sax at social functions for judges and other groups in the legal community, playing with smaller ensembles such as an offshoot of the Barristers called the “Scales of Justice,” and with a jazz trio led by attorney Gregory P. Vazquez.

“She’s able to make a few phone calls and put together a small band or a combo to play at almost any event,” said Chief U.S. District Judge James F. Holderman. “With the talent she has as the lead saxophonist, it really makes it passionate.”

She also performs at private events and public festivals, such as Taste of Chicago, alongside a group of women that includes school teachers, a daycare provider and two retired members from the back-up band to Moms Mabley’s live comedy shows of the early 1960s.

The women make up KCR (Kindness, Charity and Respect), a nine-piece, all-female ensemble whose founders were inspired by the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-women, multiracial big band that became famous in the 1940s.

The judge also plays in her church band.

“She’s the most prolific lawyer-musician in town, possibly anywhere,” said John S. Vishneski III, a partner in Reed Smith Sachnoff & Weaver who leads the Barristers.

From her courtroom next door, U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer said she can hear the brass section of the Barristers start to jell as each season wears on.

“I’ve always viewed the location as a plus,” Pallmeyer said. “I always joke with Judge Manning that her music is the reason the property values are so high on the 21st floor.”

An articulate musician
When asked what feeds her passion for music, Manning - who juggled law school in the 1960s with teaching in Chicago’s elementary schools - struggles to find the words.

“I just know that I enjoy it greatly, and without it I’d feel lost,” she said, adding that she has stepped up her music engagements since her husband of 47 years died in 2004.

Perhaps the answer reveals itself when she talks about the musicians she tries to emulate, like jazz giant Lester Young, the tenor saxophonist also known as “The Prez,” whose innovative style influenced another of Manning’s idols, Dexter Gordon.

Manning has a black-hooded jacket emblazoned with the nickname she answers to in certain circles: “Lil Ms. Prez.”

“He just had a beautiful sound and he was very articulate in his playing,” said Manning, referring to Young. “It was just something about his sound.”

For Manning-who appreciates all forms of jazz, including bebop, swing and ballads, as well as the blues - playing music is like talking.

“You’re conveying your emotions and thoughts - it’s communicating,” she said. “The horn makes different kinds of sounds. You might make a raspy sound, and it shows emotions … You can use low pitches, the rhythm. You’re verbalizing.”

Keeping her cool
From the bench, Manning communicates in a different way.

However, “I probably have the same personality on the bench as when I play,” she said. “I try to remain cool and be understanding, and be concerned. I, obviously, take everything that comes before me very seriously, but I try to be understanding as to everything I’m hearing.”

In 1987, Manning became the first black woman to be elevated to the 1st District Illinois Appellate Court. She joined the federal bench seven years later.

“It’s been an education for me,” said Manning, whose legal career began in 1968 as a prosecutor in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. “You don’t get the breadth of experience you find as a district court judge by being a prosecutor. There’s so much other law to deal with [on the federal bench].”

For instance, Manning said, early on in her tenure she presided over the trial of the three top Archer Daniels Midland Co. executives convicted in 1999 of participating in one of the largest price-fixing conspiracies in U.S. history.

“It was quite a learning experience for me. You just have to be very studious about it,” Manning said. “But I have enjoyed it.”

Criminal-defense attorney Thomas M. Breen said Manning maintains a pleasant demeanor on the bench.

He has appeared before her on several occasions, including the 13-week trial of former Chicago Police Officer Joseph Miedzianowski, the former gang crimes specialist who was convicted in 2001 of racketeering on charges that he used his badge to run a Miami-to-Chicago drug ring.

Breen said he was impressed by how Manning handled a “difficult and ugly case.” “She made an intolerable situation very tolerable, and was exceptionably professional,”

Breen said. “She ran a very tight courtroom, but was very fair.”

U.S. Attorney Brian Netols, the lead prosecutor in that case, said, “If there ever were the opportunity for her not to be even-keeled, my guess is it was this trial. She seemed to have no problem with it.

“A lot of the lawyers were awful tired by the end of the 13weeks and she was still cruising. She was still on, engaged and focused the whole time.”

Before imposing the former cop’s life sentence, Manning said she was doing so with “a heavy heart,” adding that she sympathized with the man’s family, according to a transcript of the court proceeding.

“This is really a very dark day in the history of the law enforcement system in this city … you betrayed society,” Manning said.

“There comes a time in every person’s life to embrace what he or she has become, to check the compass of his or her heart, to remember paths traveled,” Manning continued during the sentencing. “I’m afraid to discover, Mr. Miedzianowski, what you know, sir, what men and women have come in your compass, to know how you used your powers to infect a trusting society.

“I do not envy you, sir. You are cast now to confront and to reflect. I hope that you can recognize in your heart what once was, what strikes today, and what shall be.”

‘One helps the other’
Between her music and her judging, Manning said she has found the right mix.

“I think one helps the other,” she said. “Being a judge is a very serious endeavor, and I think after I finish with a day’s work, it’s very relaxing to go and play music.”

Rita Hassell, the leader of the all-female KCR band, summed up the judge’s contribution to the group: “She just brings this spirit that’s never tired. Whatever it is that was on her mind that day [in court], she gives it all to her music, and that’s a consummate musician.”

On a Friday night in November, as part of the entertainment for a benefit promoting brain tumor research held at the Newberry Library, Manning rose from her seat with the KCR band and swayed to the smooth sound of her horn. She belted out her featured sax solo with a sometimes-furrowed brow as the band kept up with a rendition of the classic jazz ballad “Soul Eyes,” by Mal Waldron.

The tune is pretty, she said later, but it’s not among her favorites, like “Misty,” “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” and “Angel Eyes.”

“They’re primarily ballads, but I usually don’t play them slowly,” Manning said. “Usually, the background is kind of a swing. It’s a ballad, but we take it a little faster and have a little more swing to it.”

Manning is quick to acknowledge that playing live music in clubs or at special events, and dispensing justice from the federal bench are distinctly different. For her, however, her music and her judicial work share one crucial, common thread.

“To do both of them you need to have a passion for it,” Manning said. “Especially to be a trial lawyer and a trial judge, I think you really have to have a passion for it. It’s very enjoyable if you have a passion for it. And, of course in music — in order to do it well — definitely.”

The road not taken
Manning’s love affair with music began to bud in 1949,when she was entering the ninth grade at Fenger High School on the Far South Side. She was checking out options for extracurricular activities during a freshman orientation session at the school and decided on band.

Her father bought her a used clarinet and, with the help of a methods book, the teenage Manning taught herself how to play.

“My parents couldn’t afford lessons, so I did the next best thing,” she said.

As a music major at Roosevelt University, Manning learned the sax and joined other young musicians in jam sessions and performances at social centers. Some of those budding musicians went on to become famous, she said, such as tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris.

“I was a clarinet major, but I started running around with all these people, and you don’t play the clarinet at a jam session,” she said, referring to what prompted her to pick up the sax.

Soon, Manning thought her course was set. “I was going to hit the road and play with whomever would have me - as a jazz musician,” she said.

But her plan quickly changed, she said, once her father caught wind of the idea. She took his advice and pursued a career in teaching, where she could “be assured of making a living.”

“I could appreciate that because back in those days [life as a jazz musician] was a rough life, from what I understand,” Manning said.

“As I recall, there were so many people who were in music, who got involved in drugs and things like that, and he was just very concerned about his baby daughter.”

New horizons
Vishneski, the leader of the Barristers Big Band, said Manning is his go-to-player for selections that call for improvised solos, which “takes a great knowledge of your instrument, a good ear, and creativity.” That’s the sort of playing Manning said she looks forward to.

“It’s creativity. It’s your thoughts instead of what’s written down on the paper,” she said. “As you’re articulating these thoughts through music, it’s kind of like a search for beauty. You’re expanding, trying to find new horizons. It’s exciting to me.”

A search for new horizons has also played out in Manning’s professional career.

She graduated from Chicago Teachers College in 1961, and taught at elementary schools in the city for seven years. But it was while she was still at the teachers college, working as a secretary at a law firm on the South Side, when she became interested in law.

She attended The John Marshall Law School at night, while working as a teacher by day. Around that same time, she and her husband, William, then a Cook County sheriff’s deputy, became “instant parents” to six nieces and nephews.

After law school, Manning served as a prosecutor in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office - from 1968 to 1973 - spending much of that time in the Criminal Courts Building at 26th Street and California Avenue.

“I became one of those lawyers who loves to be in the courtroom,” Manning said. “I don’t think I would like to be a real estate lawyer or just drafting wills. I want to be where the action is.”

Illinois Supreme Court Justice Thomas R. Fitzgerald, who was Manning’s trial partner in the state’s attorney’s office, said he admired Manning’s trial skills and her appeal to juries.

“She had a great approach to the cases. She had a wonderful courtroom voice, and was able to give truly wonderful arguments. It was an honor to be her partner,” Fitzgerald said. “She is a very nice person, and that came through in the way she conducted herself in court. I think juries she tried cases in front of really liked her.”

Manning, from then, could see herself becoming a judge. “When I was trying cases at 26th Street, that’s what I felt I was training for,” she said.

In her years after the state’s attorney’s office, Manning worked as a supervisory trial attorney in the Equal Employment Commission’s Chicago office, as a labor lawyer for United Airlines, and as an assistant U.S. attorney, before she was appointed in 1979 as an associate judge in the Cook County Circuit Court.

Manning said she wasn’t playing much music while she was raising children and working as a lawyer. She “got back into the groove of playing,” as her judicial career progressed.

In 1986, Manning was elected to a full judgeship. The following year, she was elevated by designation to the Appellate Court. Seven years later, she was sworn in as a U.S. district judge.

Manning said she likes the intellectual challenge and the human interaction that comes with being a federal trial judge.

“I also feel that as a judge you can help society,” she said. “There are so many problems in our society, many of them involve legal issues. In being a judge you’re in a position to interpret the law and to do what you believe to be the law. In doing that … you can’t be one-sided.”

She also continues to strike a balance between her continued pursuit of her two declared passions, keeping a packed music schedule, while maintaining a full criminal and civil load in federal court.

“She could’ve taken senior status some time ago and she hasn’t,” Holderman said. “She continues to be an active, full-time judge, which says something about her commitment to public service.”

Manning, who was recently inducted into the Cook County Bar Association’s 2007 Hall of Fame II, said she’s not ready to retire. “I enjoy doing what I’m doing,” she said. “To me, it’s just very exciting. It’s intellectually stimulating — it really is.

As for her music — stay tuned.

“I just found a new instrument I’m trying to get familiar with, an electronic wind instrument called an EWI,” Manning said. “It’s a wind instrument that has the fingering of a saxophone. You plug in a cable from the EWI into the amplifier. You can also plug it into a digital piano.

“It has the most beautiful mixture of sound. It’s really amazing,” Manning said. “I haven’t mastered it yet, so I’m not playing it publicly, yet.”