Henry Mancini | Artist
Enrico Nicola "Henry" Mancini was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist born 1924 in Maple Heights, Ohio. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 1995. The son of Italian immigrants, Mancini began learning the piccolo at age eight, later reflecting that hearing Rudolph G. Kopp's score in the 1935 Cecil B. DeMille film The Crusades inspired him to pursue film music composition. He later studied piano and orchestral arrangement and progressed to producing arrangements for the Stanley Theatre, including one for up-and-coming bandleader Benny Goodman. After studying piano at Julliard, and upon turning eighteen, Mancini enlisted in the US Army Air Forces in 1943. While in basic training in New Jersey he met musicians being recruited by Glenn Miller. Mancini was first assigned to the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France. In 1945, he helped liberate the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria. Mancini re-entered the music industry in 1946 and became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra. In 1952 he joined Universal-International studio's music department. During the next six years, Mancini contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably Creature From the Black Lagoon, It Came From Outer Space, The Glenn Miller Story (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination), and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. In 1958 Mancini became an independent composer/arranger and, soon afterward scored the television series Peter Gunn for writer/producer Blake Edwards. This was the start of a relationship in which Edwards and Mancini collaborated on 30 films over 35 years. Henry Mancini was a pioneer of the inclusion of jazz elements in orchestral film and TV scoring. His scores for Blake Edwards included Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Pink Panther, The Great Race, The Party, 10, and Victor Victoria. Mancini has over 130 album releases to his credit, comprising Movie and TV Soundtracks, Lounge music and Jazz orchestral works. Standout albums include A Touch of Evil (1958), Peter Gunn (1959), Music From Mr Lucky (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Charade (1963), The Pink Panther (1964), and The Party (1968). Shortly before his death in 1994, Mancini made a one-off cameo appearance in the first season of the TV series Frasier, as a call-in patient to Dr. Frasier Crane's radio show. Mancini voiced the character Al, who hates the sound of his own voice, in the episode "Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?" Moments after his cameo ends, Frasier's radio broadcast plays the Mancini classic "Moon River".
Artist Website: wikipedia/Henry_Mancini
Featured Albums: Henry Mancini
Related Artists: Glenn Miller
