DESCRIPTION:
Eric is a leading composer and performer of contemporary clarinet music and a prestigious Buffet-Crampon USA performing artist. He tours world-wide as a soloist and chamber musician, presenting lectures and recitals featuring new American clarinet music as well as traditional repertoire. He's especially noted for his facility and use of extended techniques such as multiphonics and microtones that leave even the most accomplished professionals scratching their heads and saying, "how did he do that?". As a composer, Mandat focuses on solo and chamber works for clarinet. His compositions utilize extended techniques within a framework largely influenced by jazz and traditional music of non-Western cultures. The Clarinet Journal finds that his Aprocess at writing and laying is bound to leave any listener in awe. "One is constantly challenged and surprised by gorgeous tone color changes, exciting rhythmic action and 21st century clarinetistry".

In November 2005 CD review Fanfare Magazine remarked that Mandat's music creates "amazing technical effects for the instrument" that are "startling and eerie." In a review in The Clarinet Journal of Mandat's "Folk Songs", the author exclaimed that "A composition of this caliber will most likely
enter the performance repertoire as the representative piece of the decade!" Reviewing Mandat's solo CD, The Extended Clarinet, in The Clarinet Journal, Michele Gingras wrote that, "In one word, The Extended Clarinet is astonishing".