If Michael Manring seems difficult to categorize, it’s by design. "I take an almost adolescent delight in trying to challenge preconceptions," he says. "If we hold on to preconceptions, we do music a disservice and conceal a lot of creative choices. I'd like to see music evolve beyond genres and niches." This stubbornness, and a keen interest in every stripe of the musical spectrum, has helped Manring become an omnivorous bass player who's constantly challenging expectations of the instrument.

Born in Washington, D.C., Manring played upright bass in his high school orchestra and various chamber groups, while also playing in local pop bands. Three years with D.C. fusion outfit Natural Bridge after high school served as a springboard to session work with new age label Windham Hill, and his career since has included more than two hundred recordings and countless live performances with dozens of high-profile collaborators, including Alex de Grassi, Patti Larkin, John Gorka, Thomas Dolby, Will Ackerman, Henry Kaiser, Philip Aaberg, and acoustic guitar legend Michael Hedges. He has also recorded or performed with the bands Spastic Ink, Attention Deficit, and Miles Davis tribute band Yo Miles!, and headlined the Windham Hill all-star outfit Montreux throughout the 1980s.

But it's not his endless credits or hectic schedule that have earned him the endless praise that has followed his every record and performance for more than 20 years: it's his playing, at once displaying did-he-really-just-do-that virtuosity, technical innovation worthy of the most whacked-out inventor, and a passion for the possibilities of music that comes through as pure joy.

Manring, who studied under illustrious bass master Jaco Pastorius, has taken the instrument into wildly new directions, redefining its role as a solo instrument and reconstructing how it’s played. Manring’s primary instrument, the Zon Hyperbass, which he co-designed with Zon Bass's Joseph Zon, lets him jump to more than 100 different tunings in a single piece. That unprecedented latitude, combined with the range of techniques he's mastered, including traditional fingerstyle playing, slapping, plucking, chord strumming, hammering, harmonics, alternate tunings, and contrapuntal two-handed tapping on fretted and fretless instruments, as well as his penchant for playing multiple basses at the same time while on stage, has established Manring as a pioneer of the instrument whose influence on future generations of musicians may rival that of his own legendary mentor.