Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini (/mænˈsiːni/ man-SEE-nee; born Enrico Nicola Mancini; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flutist, best known as a composer of film and television scores. 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 in 1995.

His best-known works include the theme and soundtrack for the television series Peter Gunn, as well as the music for The Pink Panther film series ("The Pink Panther Theme") and the song "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's. The Music from Peter Gunn won the inaugural Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1958. "Moon River" and the title song from Days of Wine and Roses, both cowritten with lyricist Johnny Mercer, won the Grammy Awards for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1961 and 1963 respectively. Mancini enjoyed a long collaboration in composing for film director Blake Edwards. Mancini also scored a No. 1 single on the Hot 100 in 1969 with his arrangement and recording of the "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet".

Henry Mancini was born on April 16, 1924 as Enrico Nicola Mancini in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. Both his parents were Italian immigrants from Southern Italy; his father Quintiliano "Quinto" Mancini, originally from Scanno, Abruzzo, was a laborer at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company and amateur musician who first moved to the U.S. as a teenager around 1910, whereas his mother Anna (née Pece) moved to the U.S. from Forlì del Sannio, Molise, as an infant.

At age eight, Mancini began learning the piccolo. Mancini said that hearing Rudolph G. Kopp's score in the 1935 Cecil B. DeMille film The Crusades inspired him to pursue film music composition despite his father's wishes for him to become a teacher.

At age 12, he began studying piano and orchestral arrangement under Pittsburgh concert pianist and Stanley Theatre (now Benedum Center) conductor Max Adkins. Not only did Mancini produce arrangements for the Stanley Theatre bands, but he also wrote an arrangement for Benny Goodman, an up-and-coming bandleader introduced to him by Adkins. According to Mancini biographer John Caps, the young Mancini "preferred music arranging to any kind of musical performance, but taking apart a Chopin mazurka or Schumann sonata in order to play it helped him see…how the puzzle of form, meter, melody, harmony, and counterpoint had been solved by previous composers."

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.