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Any Henry Mancini fans?


AdrianMonk

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love his stuff too. days of wine and roses. panther. and of course, who could forget great mouse detective (Which is definately his best score:D). william's sabrina is so mancini-esque.

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you should get a little Mancini gem called

Victor/Victoria, another typically great film from 1982.

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Mancini is a wonderful composer. I recommend "Breakfast at Tiffany's" as his all-time classic score (after Pink Panther of course!), but also look out for "The Party", and a classy little score called "Arabesque".

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I actually really enjoyed a lot of the Mancini stuff they played in Boston. I remember particularly liking "Pennywhistle Jig" and "Overture for a Pops Concert" (I think that's what they were called). And "Moon River" always melts my heart, it's such a great classic tune.

Ray Barnsbury

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  • 6 months later...

Love Mancini. The Cuban Overture is my favorite Gershwin piece, so it's fitting I took to Mancini quickly. So far I have:

Breakfast at Tiffany's (could listen to Latin Golightly all day)

Charade

The Pink Panther

Touch of Evil is on it's way

I at least have enough of his music for a perfect Friday night cocktail cd. ;)

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The Cuban Overture is my favorite Gershwin piece

I must have listened to three or four different performances of that piece this weekend. It's been my favorite Gershwin piece for a long time. Love it!

Neil

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Best listened to with a huge Cuban. Cigar that is!

Hitch, who likes Mancini's theme from PETER GUNN.

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The Cuban Overture is my favorite Gershwin piece

I must have listened to three or four different performances of that piece this weekend. It's been my favorite Gershwin piece for a long time. Love it!

Neil

Glad I'm not the only one. I was afraid I might get flamed for making a statement like that given the other more popular classics he has done.

Best listened to with a huge Cuban.  Cigar that is!

Oddly enough my sister just gave me my gift of a dozen Punch maduros she picked up on her vacation in Punta Cana.

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Have mentioned this elsewhere on this board, but his score to "Condorman" was the best and most memorable thing from that movie.....high time ffor a proper release I feel.....

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Have mentioned this elsewhere on this board, but his score to "Condorman" was the best and most memorable thing from that movie.....high time ffor a proper release I feel.....

Michael Crawford was ace as Batman...I mean Condorman.

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Wait Until Dark, like most of his dramatic underscoring, is an underappreciated gem.

Just added this into my queue at Netflix... been in the mood for a Hepburn movie lately.

That's a great quote in your signature. That was from a letter she wrote to Mancini after hearing his score for Breakfast at Tiffany's right?

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Wait Until Dark, like most of his dramatic underscoring, is an underappreciated gem.

Just added this into my queue at Netflix... been in the mood for a Hepburn movie lately.

That's a great quote in your signature. That was from a letter she wrote to Mancini after hearing his score for Breakfast at Tiffany's right?

That's right. To quote the letter in full:

Dear Henry,

I have just seen our picture—BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S—this time with your score.  

A movie without music is a little bit like an aeroplane without fuel.  However beautifully the job is done, we are still on the ground and in a world of reality.  Your music has lifted us all up and sent us soaring.

Everything we cannot say with words or show with action you have expressed for us.  You have done this with so much imagination, fun and beauty.  

You are the hippest of cats—and the most sensitive of composers!  

Thank you, dear Hank.

Lots of love,

Audrey

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Thanks for verifying that . I just looked in my cd case and there is a very small picture of the letter inside that I hadn't noticed before. Boy what I wouldn't give to receive a letter from her. That woman is sheer poetry.

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Anyone know any good recordings or compilations that would include the pieces I mentioned above ("Pennywhistle Jig" and "Overture for a Pops Concert")?

Ray Barnsbury

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  • 1 month later...

Picked up Touch of Evil recently. Excellent excellent score. I can't recommend this one enough to any Mancini fans. A real nice samba jazz style , mixed with a little bit of early rock and roll at times. Less melodic than some of his more famous scores in the sixties, but if you're looking for solid jazz, this is a good one.

I knew there was a reason I signed him to score my picture.

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I've always been weak for his music to "The Great Race", a Blake Edwards film featuring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Natalie Wood and err... you know that guy who played Columbo... Peter something...

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  • 15 years later...

I did It... I oponed the Pandora... woops Manciny Box!

 

Now, I'm doomed!

 

Of course, by instinct I started with a compilation.  In my mind (change my mind), Henry Mancini is more of a background music/song writer than a "big epic film" composer in the style of the composers from the Hollywood "Golden Age".

 

It's not pejorative, he's a great composer, in fact one of the great music composers we had in the modern era, but he's definitely a jazzy/romance guy (he once described himself like a romance guy).

 

Then, I've decided to go with "early" jazzy works like the albums of "Peter Gunn", "Mr. Lucky", "The Blues and the Beast", etc...

 

Then I will turn to "Breakfast at Tiffany's"... "The Pink Panter"...

 

But now I have a question for Mancini aficionados... In his career, did he compose more "traditional" and strucured scores, maybe for more serious movies?

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Also Lifeforce. His score for the boozing drama Days of Wine and Roses has some very touching and eloquently sad pieces, especially the 7-minute long 'I want to come home', which features the famous title theme in a variety of guises and you can hear how this direct way of writing informed guys like Williams in their approach.

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On 6/4/2021 at 10:42 PM, Yavar Moradi said:

My favorite Mancini is and probably always will be Wait Until Dark. But don’t just buy it on album. Seek out the excellent film and experience it there, first. Incredible serious scoring.

 

Yavar

I literally could not listen to this.

The quarter- tone dissonance hurt my ears!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Mancini's recording of The Disaster Movie Suite (Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Jaws), together with lots of other stuff in a 2 CD set, is now available for £1.99 on Dutton Vocalion's website. Remastered from the original analogue tapes.

 

https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=CDLK4558

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On 6/18/2021 at 4:54 PM, Jay said:

 

Thanks for the tip, it turns out they have a bunch of Mancini albums there for super cheap I just bought!
 

CDLK4558    Henry Mancini Big Screen / Little Screen & A Concert of Film Music    £1.99
CDLK4567    Henry Mancini Theme from "Z" and other film music & Debut!    £1.99
CDLK4582    Henry Mancini - Mancini Concert & Mancini Plays the Theme from Love Story    £0.99
CDSML8499    Henry Mancini The Mancini Generation & Hangin' Out with Henry Mancini    £0.99
CDSML8504    Henry Mancini The Cop Show Themes & Symphonic Soul    £4.99
Sub Total:    £10.95
Shipping:    £13.00
Grand Total:    £23.95

 

Good haul. Their awesome summer sale also includes:

 

An Arthur Bliss twofer containing his 1957 recording of his suite from Things to Come

An Elmer Bernstein soundtrack

A Nelson Riddle soundtrack

Three Benny Goodman albums

Several albums with Geoff Love & His Orchestra :P

Several albums with Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops

Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (original version)

Several John Wilson albums

Rachmaninov conducts his 3rd symphony

Several albums with Aldré Kostelanetz, including one track from CE3K and one from Superman

A Mendelssohn piano concerto completed from the original sketches

 

Many of DuttonVocalion's releases are remastered from master sources.

 

EDIT: the summer sale seems to have ended a few hours ago, and it's not even proper summer here! I won't be surprised if many of the titles pop up in future sales.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Those Mancini albums arrived last week (and got waterlogged on my front stoop when it started pouring rain), but they seem OK.


No idea when I'll get to listen to them - now that I'm back in the office my project of listening to my entire physical collection has really slowed down

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