If you’ve read The Zen of MLM, then you’ve met my dad, the late Dr. Alfred Mann, noted Bach scholar and conductor. I wrote about him, and what I learned from him about leadership, in a Networking Times editorial called “True Leadership,” which you can also read here.

This past April he would have turned ninety; as it happens, one fine evening last September, he went to sleep and just never got around to getting up again the next day. He died as he lived, with grace and dignity. The Zen of my dad.

And now there’s going to be an amazing event to honor his life and career. The Eastman School of Music (in Rochester, New York), in conjunction with Publick Musick (a baroque ensemble organization also in Rochester), is sponsoring an annual event that premiers this coming November: the Alfred Mann Music Festival.

The event will focus on the two works with which he was most intimately involved throughout his long career: Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Mass in B Minor. While I never did have the chance to perform the Messiah under his leadership, I did have the distinct honor and pleasure of playing in the orchestra for several of his B Minor Mass performances. Quiet, understated, gentle yet intensely accurate, his style was kanso itself. (If you’re not familiar with the term kanso, you haven’t read The Zen of MLM!)

I and a whole bunch of my family will be there this November for the festival. I hope some of you reading this can make it as well! (If you need advice on travel and accomodations, write me at jdm@johndavidmann.com.)