Manatee is an exploration of the relationship between electronic music and acoustic music.  Many electronics-accompanied instrumental pieces exhibit certain tendencies: the instrument carries the line, the electronics carry the effects, and any surround sound is (often) the result of routing the electronic signal.  In this work, the melodic material is solely in the electronic part, the piano plays a delayed version of the accompaniment in the electronics, and live performers on "ambient sound" instruments surround the audience to provide live, acoustic surround sound. The title was the suggestion of my wife Tammy.  The day after she suggested it, I watched manatee footage online while intermittently working on this piece.  I was struck by both the austerity and the beauty of slowness in the video footage, which I hoped would translate to this music, so the title stuck.