Robert Mann

Mann played and performed on many instruments, including those made by Antonio Stradivari and John Young. Mann was the subject of a 2014 documentary, titled Speak the Music.

In recognition of his contributions to the arts, Robert Mann was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 1996.

As a mentor to younger generations of string musicians, Mann worked intensively with the Alexander, American, Concord, Emerson, New World, Mendelssohn, Tokyo, Brentano, Lark, and St. Lawrence strings quartets, as well as with members of the Cleveland String Quartet and other ensembles. In later years, he expanded his teaching to include violin majors at the Juilliard School. Among his students were Juliette Kang, who won the Indianapolis International Violin Competition in 1994, and Mark Steinberg, the first violinist of the Brentano String Quartet.

Founder and first artistic director of the Ravinia Stean's Institute for Young Artists at Chicago's Ravinia Festival, Mann also served as chairman of the Chamber Music Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Philharmonic, and president of the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation. In 1990, Mann was honored as the recipient of the Chamber Music America Service Award and the annual award of the American String Teachers Association. He received honorary doctorates from the Manhattan School of Music, Oberlin College, Michigan State University, Earlham College, Jacksonville University, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Mann conducted throughout his professional career; he led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a Peter Bartók recording of Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 1. He made his public debut as a conductor with the Seattle Symphony during the 1988-89 season, and conducted the Jupiter Symphony, a musical group, the following season in New York City.

At the invitation of Juilliard's president, William Schuman, Mann founded the Juilliard String Quartet in 1946 and served as the ensemble's first violinist until his retirement from the quartet in 1997. The quartet, which celebrated its golden jubilee during the 1996–97 season, had played approximately 5,000 concerts and performed more than 600 works, including some 100 premieres. Its discography includes recordings of more than 100 compositions. They have received three Grammy awards for their recordings.

In 1938, at the age of eighteen, he moved to New York City to enroll in the Juilliard School, where he studied violin with Edouard Dethier, composition with Bernard Wagenaar and Stefan Wolpe, and conducting with Edgar Schenkman. Mann won the prestigious Naumburg Competition in 1941 and made his New York debut two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Shortly after his graduation from Juilliard, he was drafted into the US Army.

Robert Nathaniel Mann (July 19, 1920 – January 1, 2018) was a violinist, composer, conductor, and founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet, as well as a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music. Mann, the first violinist at Juilliard, served on the school's string quartet for over fifty years until his retirement in 1997.