The Music Of Henry Mancini

Hayman And His Orchestra

Regular: £11.49

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Cat No: 8557825

Release Date: 12 January 2005

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313282524

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: The Music Of Henry Mancini

Description
Henry Mancini (1924-1994)Among light music fans and film-buffs the now familiar handful of popular tunes and 'standards' left by composer, song-writer, arranger pianist and conductor Henry Mancini are tinged with the halo of nostalgia. The recipient of twenty Grammies, four Oscars, eighteen Oscar nominations and various other 'lifetime' awards, Enrico ('Henry') Nicola Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio on 16th April 1924, and grew up in West Aquilippa, Philadelphia. A proficient multiinstrumentalist, from an early age he was an adept pianist and also took up the flute (the latter courtesy of his steelworker father, a music-lover who was himself an amateur piccolo-player in the Aqilippa, Philadelphiabased Sons of Italy Band). During his early training at the Carnegie Institute Music School in Pittsburgh, Henry was also steadily drawn towards jazz and big band and developed a keen interest in arranging. In 1942 he entered the New York Juilliard Graduate School but by 1943 was drafted into the US Air Force, where he remained until 1946, primarily in the capacity of military band musician.After demobilisation Mancini became pianistarranger with Tex Beneke's recently re-vamped Glenn Miller Orchestra and from 1947, in Los Angeles, worked variously as a nightclub freelancer and radio staff arranger, undertaking advanced training in composition in his spare time with, among others, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) and Ernst Krenek (1900-1991). In 1951 he joined the staff of Universal Pictures, working under music director Joseph Gershenson (1904-1988) in the dual capacity of arranger and composer. His unique talents were thus brought to bear on various genres of film, ranging from musicals including the major Hollywood biopics The Glenn Miller Story, which earned him his first Academy Award nomination, in 1954, and The Benny Goodman Story (1955) to B-westerns (Four Guns To The Border, 1954), slapstick (Abbott And Costello Meet The Keystone Cops, 1955), gangster comedies (Mister Cory, starring Tony Curtis, 1957) and monster movies. In the latter category his mastery of 'suspense atmosphere' produced backgrounds for such titles as The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954), Tarantula and Francis In The Haunted House (both 1956) and Man Afraid (1957) and by the time he contributed to the Citizen Kane-inspired The Great Man (starring Jose Ferrer, 1956) and the classic Orson Welles 'late film noir' masterpiece Touch Of Evil (Mancini's first complete scoring, in 1958) he had evolved, in the words of Nicolas Slonimsky, into \one of the most adroit composers of melodramatic music.As a composer in his own right Mancini first reached a wider audience in 1959 when, recently released from contract by Universal (their association continued freelance), he was commissioned to write a Hollywood-style 'cool jazz' score for the American hit television series Peter Gunn. Another, equally successful series, Mr. Lucky, followed a year later, and Mancini would thereafter
Tracklisting