Manousakis gained his footing in live theater while at Columbia College in Chicago, where he studied composition with Gustavo Leone before returning to work with Tim Ward and Andreas Mniestris at the Ionian University in Corfu, Greece. Prior to his sojourn in Chicago, Manousakis had already composed the music for a short film called Angel (1994) and was deeply engaged in both independent avant-garde theater and in the popular theater of his native country. Since that time, he has rarely been without a film or stage project and as a result has embraced a wide variety of stylistic influences. He notes, “I found that, through composing for music for the theater, I could explore different paths of writing–from baroque music when composing for Shakespearean plays to hard core electronica when composing for independent shows.” In addition to these disparate sound worlds, Manousakis cites as important influences the music of Cage, Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, as well as Xenakis and Yannis Christou.
