Joseph Arthur Mann was born in Easton, Maryland, to a family of shoreman. At the age of 8, he moved with his family to Farmville, Virginia, where he was accepted to Longwood University's Bachelor's of Music Education program at the age of 16. Mann's musical experience began realtively late in his life. His first experience with music came at age 14, when he taught himself to play the Bugle, and later the Trumpet. His formal music training would not begin until he entered Longwood University two years later. His first experience with keyboard instruments, which he would later specialize in, came on August 31st, 2004, with his first undergraduate piano class. After a year of class piano, he requested and was granted a transfer of specialization from trumpet to piano, and added piano pedagogy as a second major. While he began performing on shared recitals in his first year, he made his major performance debut in his third year of playing the piano, with a piano/harpsichord recital, which included B. Bartok's Suite Op.14, F. Liszt's Au Lac de Wallenstadt, and works by J.S. Bach, F. Couperin, F.Chopin, and S. Thalberg. As a composer, Mann began self study in 2004, which developed from his fondness for improvising. As a result, the majority of his works are written for the piano and are direct transcriptions of his improvisations. His compositions where first featured on the 2006 American Music Recital, an annual concert sponsored by PMA and SAI, on which he is annually commissioned to perform original works. His major compositional debut came in 2007, when he was commissioned by Sigma Alpha Iota to write and perform an original program, including 9 solo piano works, and a choral work for the SAI choir. In 2008, Mann was commissioned by Michael Shetley to write "Mike's Nite," a solo clarinet feature for jazz ensemble, which would later be permiered by Mr. Shetley with the Longwood University Jazz Ensemble A in 2009. On that same concert, the Longwood University Wind Symphony premiered "Shapes of Color," composed and directed by Mann. Shapes, was his first major wind ensemble piece. In 2009, Mann was accepted to the Master's of Music in Piano Performance program at James Madison University.
