Monica Mancini can point to the exact night – April 9, 1962 – when she and her two siblings realized that their father, the legendary film composer Henry Mancini, wasn’t like other dads.
“There was a real specific time when us kids became quite aware that we were dealing with somebody who wasn’t just, you know, a dad that went to work and came home at dinner,” Mancini says on a recent call. “It was the Academy Awards show where he picked up two Oscars in one night.
“He won for the best score for ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and also (best song) for ‘Moon River,’” she says. “We’re watching it on our little black-and-white TV in the San Fernando Valley. We saw him go up and accept these two awards, and we’re sort of looking at each other, going, ‘Wow, this guy’s kind of a big deal.’
“So I think we started paying more attention to it at that point,” says Mancini, who as an adult, became an acclaimed interpreter of the songs of her father as well as other standards from the film world and the Great American Songbook.
Though she wasn’t always paying attention strictly to her father’s work.
“Because I was such a Beatlemaniac, I said, ‘Oh my God, maybe now we can meet the Beatles,’” Mancini says, laughing. “I thought, he must be famous; he can hook me up with the Beatles. That’s where my head went.”
Henry Mancini, who died at 70 in 1994, would have turned 100 on April 16 this year. To celebrate, the Hollywood Bowl, with input from the Mancini Family, will open its 2024 season on Sunday, June 23 with a celebration of Henry Mancini’s centennial year.
Singers including Michael Bublé, Cynthia Erivo and Monica Mancini, as well as saxophonist Dave Koz, will perform with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and conductor Thomas Wilkins.
The prolific Mancini composed many of the most memorable film scores and theme songs in cinema history, from “Touch of Evil” and “The Pink Panther” to “Charade” and “10.”
He won four Oscars – for scores, songs or both for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “The Days of Wine and Roses,” and “Victor/Victoria” – out of 18 times he was nominated. He won 20 Grammys out of 72 total nominations, too.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Monica Mancini talked about plans for the celebration at the Hollywood Bowl and throughout the rest of Henry Mancini’s 100th year, the qualities that made him such a terrific film composer, how one of his songs became a viral hit on TikTok today, and more.
Q: So what does this mean to you that your father is in the spotlight for the opening of the Bowl season?
A: Since the Hollywood Bowl is kind of in our backyard, it’s a really special venue on its own. But the fact that dad had been performing there since the early ’60s – I think he performed 29 times there or something – it is just coming around full circle.
The fact that the Bowl offered this as an opening for the 2024 season was really cool. We expected that there would be a concert in his honor one way or the other, but to open the season was really kind of extra special. So it’s a warm and fuzzy kind of thing.
Q: Did the family have input with these events? [Henry Mancini is survived by Monica Mancini, her twin sister Felice, and son Christopher. His widow Ginny died at 97 in 2021.]
A: Quite a bit in organizing them. The Bowl is producing the show, so we didn’t have as much input on the creative side of it, although we’re doing our best. My mom was on the board of the LA Phil for many years. She just loved being part of that organization, so it’s really her that I feel especially proud about doing this for. At some point in the concert, we’ll acknowledge my mother as well, because she really got us involved in the L.A. Philharmonic.
Q: How is the show going to be structured?
A: Honestly, I am not terribly hands-on right now with that. I’m letting Greg (Field, her musician-producer husband) handle all that. We have a real specific way that we like to present Dad’s music and have it be the most impactful. Connecting it with film, and also playing some things that people in the audience will go, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know he wrote that.’
Q: Tell me more about your early memories of your father at work.
A: As kids, we did go with him when he started recording more and more in Hollywood. He’d take us to the sessions and we’d just kind of hang out in the recording studio. So we were very aware when we got into our pre-teenage years about his music. We didn’t pay that much attention until we actually went to see his films.
I think the first one I saw, when I really connected the music to the film, was ‘Days of Wine and Roses.’ That was a pretty powerful experience for me, and as a result, that’s one of my favorite songs, if not the favorite, that he’s written. That was my first experience in putting two and two together as far as Dad’s music. You know, one thing he really did well was write hit songs. He happened to have a really profound gift for melody and could craft a beautiful melody for a movie.
Q: As you grew up and became a singer yourself, you probably came to understand more about what he did in the music he wrote.
A: Whatever the secret sauce is, I don’t know. The only thing I can say is that his music really told you who he was as a person. I mean, every score I can think of really is a reflection of either his humor or humanity, his romantic side, all that kind of stuff. He could do it all.
Q: I think that at some point there was a change in how Henry Mancini music is seen, from easy listening to hip. Donald Fagen of Steely Dan wrote of your dad’s music, ‘All hail the high priest of Hollywood cool,’ for instance.
A: When dad wasn’t working on a film, he’d be out on the road doing pop concerts all over the world, symphony concerts. He always wanted to very relevant and he would listen when we were playing our rock and roll or whatever. So in a concert, he’d do a Beatles medley and then a Simon and Garfunkel suite. Then he’d do a – not Fleetwood Mac, who was it who did ‘The Wall’?
Q: Pink Floyd?
A: Yeah. He really enjoyed the music. This new recording we’ve just finished, (jazz guitarist) Pat Metheny is playing one of his songs, ‘Lujon,’ which has become this TikTok sensation, for some reason. It resonates with all ages. It’s the most bizarre thing. So he did have this hip factor threaded through his entire career.
Q: I did not know it was a TikTok song, but that probably explains why it’s his most streamed song on Spotify, above ‘Moon River’ and everything else.
A: I don’t know what it is. Someone sent us a YouTube clip of – what’s Bono’s son’s band called? Inhaler. And there’s a scene that has this massive arena and prior to the guys coming out on stage, all of a sudden they play ‘Lujon,’ the original version, and they have this green lighting going through the arena, kind of creating this vibe as ‘Lujon’ comes on and the crowds of people are just screaming.
It’s like, ‘Whoa!’ It was surreal. And this is the kind of thing Dad would love. He would absolutely just go off on something like this.
Q: You mentioned Pat Metheny doing a song for a new album. Is that out yet?
A: We released ‘Peter Gunn’ (newly recorded by Quincy Jones, John Williams, Herbie Hancock and Arturo Sandoval) and ‘Pink Panther’ with Lizzo and James Galway (on flutes). I think the Michael Bublé ‘Moon River’ track will be released coming up. But the whole album will be released on June 21 just prior to the Bowl.
Q: Can you share which songs you’re going to sing at the Bowl?
A: Yeah, I’m going to be singing ‘Meggie’s Theme,’ it’s ‘Anywhere the Heart Goes’ from ‘The Thorn Birds.’ Because we also wanted to show that he had TV chops as well. And the other song I’m going to sing will be ‘Two For the Road,’ because it was Dad’s favorite song that he had written, and was sort of my parents’ song. So it’s a sentimental favorite.
Q: Why was it his favorite song?
A: I don’t know. It’s his peers’ favorite, too. If you were to ask any of them, Quincy Jones or anyone, they all would say ‘Two For the Road.’ It’s just one of his beautiful melodies, but it takes some left turns. At least these are the things explained to me by bona fide musicians who know chord structure. They just say he did an amazing thing with the song.
I can only respond to that by knowing I love to sing it. Because of what it means to the family and just what a beautiful song it is to sing. The lyric (by Leslie Bricusse) is – ‘If you’re feeling fancy-free / come wander through the world with me / And anyplace we chance to be / will be a rendezvous.’ It just speaks to their life together and the way they lived it.
Q: I know about the concert and the album now, what else is planned for your dad’s centennial?
A: The day after the Bowl, on the 24th, there’s going to be a Grammy Museum event, and we’ll have a panel and about a 30-minute performance. Then over the summer, I’ll be doing a 100th anniversary concert in Napa. There will be a concert at Ravinia in Chicago with the Chicago Symphony in August. And in September we’re going to do the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
They’re shooting the Hollywood Bowl show for a ‘Great Performances’ PBS pledge special so that will be aired in November. And there’s also a documentary in the works. So we’ve got a lot of plates spinning. But we figured we have this one year, 2024 to really just throw everything at everything.
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