Post by Clouseau on Nov 17, 2007 1:08:35 GMT
www.post-gazette.com/pg/07319/833983-42.stm
Music Preview: Monica Mancini brings her dad's music to the Pops
Thursday, November 15, 2007
By Jane Vranish, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
They call it the Mancini touch, a blend of light, easy jazz that can break out in a soulful melodic sweep. Henry Mancini was the top Hollywood composer of his generation, winning numerous awards for songs like "Moon River," "The Pink Panther" and "Days of Wine and Roses" in a career that spanned more than 50 years and made an indelible mark on American pop music.
His daughter Monica grew up listening to him compose in his little studio off the garage and often taped demos for him. That singular father/daughter bond will be on display at the Pittsburgh Symphony Pops this weekend with "Mancini at the Movies."
Enrico Nicola Mancini was born in Cleveland on April 16, 1924, but the family moved to West Aliquippa, where at the age of 12 he took up the piano and played with his father in the local band, Sons of Italy. A brief sojourn to Julliard to study music was interrupted when the young musician was drafted into the armed forces.
That Beaver Valley connection never left him, says Monica. "He loved his attachment to West Aliquippa," she recalls, explaining that his father, Quinto, urged him to study music because he didn't want him to work in the steel mills. At the height of his career in the early '60s, Henry gladly returned home for a big homecoming celebration.
That career blossomed after World War II. When Henry returned to the United States, he became a pianist and arranger for The Glenn Miller-Tex Beneke Orchestra. There he met his wife, singer Ginny O'Connor.
By 1952, Henry had joined the Universal International Studios music department as a staff writer, where he helped score more than 100 movies, including "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" and "It Came from Outer Space." But he attracted the most attention for his work on "The Glenn Miller Story," leading to his first Academy Award nomination and the early signs of real success.
So after six years, Henry struck out on his own. His television theme, "Peter Gunn," attracted the attention of the young director on the project, Blake Edwards, and the two embarked on 30 years of collaborating on award-winning films like "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (Audrey Hepburn had "a wicked sense of humor"), "Days of Wine and Roses" and "The Pink Panther."
Henry was most noted for being the first to introduce a jazz inflection into movie scores, gaining him the title "hippest of cats." Whether it was the loping rhythms of "Hatari" or the melodic lines of "Arabesque," there was a certain swing to a Mancini tune that no one else could copy.
Monica came to it all naturally, given her musical genes. After some perfunctory piano lessons, she followed her mother's path as a background singer, explaining that "it got me used to reading music and vocally got me used to different types of music."
But what would she do when she made it? She wondered, "What do I really sound like?"
She only discovered an independent voice as a pop stylist when Henry passed away in 1994 and left some symphony orchestra dates unfilled. When the substitute, composer/arranger Bill Conti, decided to do a Mancini tribute, he called Monica.
"It was nothing like I had done before," she says. At first she had trouble getting through the program. "Even today, if I allow myself to get too immersed in a song, I'll just lose it -- so I get immersed in another way."
Maybe it's because her father's compositions, with their tenderness and humor, "speak volumes about who he was as a person."
So when Monica sings in these concerts today, it's like the music drifting in from that tiny studio off the garage. "It's a really cool thing because it makes me think of him all the time," she says. "We still can have a really nice relationship through his music."
Monica Mancini says her father, Henry, loved his
attachment to West Aliquippa, where he lived as
a child.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
By Jane Vranish, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
They call it the Mancini touch, a blend of light, easy jazz that can break out in a soulful melodic sweep. Henry Mancini was the top Hollywood composer of his generation, winning numerous awards for songs like "Moon River," "The Pink Panther" and "Days of Wine and Roses" in a career that spanned more than 50 years and made an indelible mark on American pop music.
His daughter Monica grew up listening to him compose in his little studio off the garage and often taped demos for him. That singular father/daughter bond will be on display at the Pittsburgh Symphony Pops this weekend with "Mancini at the Movies."
Enrico Nicola Mancini was born in Cleveland on April 16, 1924, but the family moved to West Aliquippa, where at the age of 12 he took up the piano and played with his father in the local band, Sons of Italy. A brief sojourn to Julliard to study music was interrupted when the young musician was drafted into the armed forces.
That Beaver Valley connection never left him, says Monica. "He loved his attachment to West Aliquippa," she recalls, explaining that his father, Quinto, urged him to study music because he didn't want him to work in the steel mills. At the height of his career in the early '60s, Henry gladly returned home for a big homecoming celebration.
That career blossomed after World War II. When Henry returned to the United States, he became a pianist and arranger for The Glenn Miller-Tex Beneke Orchestra. There he met his wife, singer Ginny O'Connor.
By 1952, Henry had joined the Universal International Studios music department as a staff writer, where he helped score more than 100 movies, including "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" and "It Came from Outer Space." But he attracted the most attention for his work on "The Glenn Miller Story," leading to his first Academy Award nomination and the early signs of real success.
So after six years, Henry struck out on his own. His television theme, "Peter Gunn," attracted the attention of the young director on the project, Blake Edwards, and the two embarked on 30 years of collaborating on award-winning films like "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (Audrey Hepburn had "a wicked sense of humor"), "Days of Wine and Roses" and "The Pink Panther."
Henry was most noted for being the first to introduce a jazz inflection into movie scores, gaining him the title "hippest of cats." Whether it was the loping rhythms of "Hatari" or the melodic lines of "Arabesque," there was a certain swing to a Mancini tune that no one else could copy.
Monica came to it all naturally, given her musical genes. After some perfunctory piano lessons, she followed her mother's path as a background singer, explaining that "it got me used to reading music and vocally got me used to different types of music."
But what would she do when she made it? She wondered, "What do I really sound like?"
She only discovered an independent voice as a pop stylist when Henry passed away in 1994 and left some symphony orchestra dates unfilled. When the substitute, composer/arranger Bill Conti, decided to do a Mancini tribute, he called Monica.
"It was nothing like I had done before," she says. At first she had trouble getting through the program. "Even today, if I allow myself to get too immersed in a song, I'll just lose it -- so I get immersed in another way."
Maybe it's because her father's compositions, with their tenderness and humor, "speak volumes about who he was as a person."
So when Monica sings in these concerts today, it's like the music drifting in from that tiny studio off the garage. "It's a really cool thing because it makes me think of him all the time," she says. "We still can have a really nice relationship through his music."
Monica Mancini says her father, Henry, loved his
attachment to West Aliquippa, where he lived as
a child.