Henry Mancini

On June 14 I got up and as usual, turned on the radio. Jack Jones was singing, "Dear Heart," one of Henry Mancini's compositions that I, a professional singer, included in my repertoire. After listening for a while, I decided to send Henry Mancini a letter. I hadheard that he was ill and I wanted to wish him well and let him know how I admired him and his music. I had had the pleasure of meeting him and Ginny, his lovely wife, at many parties where I had entertained. Then I sat down, wrote the letter and mailed it. A few minutes later, I got in my car, turned on the radio and again "Dear Heart" was playing--this time, it was a big orchestra conducted by the maestro himself.

With its sophisticated, snappy dialogue and film noir sensibility, "Peter Gunn" was something new for television when it premiered on NBC in 1958. Created and produced by Blake Edwards ("Pink Panther"), who also wrote and directed some episodes, "Peter Gunn" was one of the first detective series to feature a suave, womanizing private eye (Craig Stevens). Herschel Bernardi played his acerbic friend Lt. Jacoby; Hope Emerson (in the first season) and Minerva Urecal (the last two) owned the nightclub Mother's, where Gunn's girlfriend Edie (Lola Albright)

Henry Mancini, who died Tuesday in Beverly Hills after a long battle with cancer, liked to tell about the day he ran into Blake Edwards outside the Universal commissary. Edwards asked if Mancini would be interested in scoring a television series. Mancini said he would and asked what the series would be called. "Peter Gunn," Edwards said. Mancini walked away, thinking that it might be fun to do a Western.

British composer George Fenton, 61, is several decades into a career writing for film, theater and television. His film scores alone cover a great deal of ground, ranging from high-toned period pieces to smart comedies and much in between - "Dangerous Liaisons," "The Fisher King," "The History Boys,""Groundhog Day" and dozens of others. He's been nominated for five Academy Awards, including for the score of "Gandhi" with collaborator Ravi Shankar. Fenton's early days involved acting, including an important part in "Forty Years On," a play by Alan Bennett and some English television.

"I decided that I wanted to write for orchestra," legendary film composer Henry Mancini said a few months before he passed away in 1994, "when I was a kid playing flute in an orchestra in Pittsburgh. I sat there, listening to all the sounds around me, and I just knew I had to find out how they were put together." It's appropriate, given that curiosity, that the American Jazz Philharmonic has named its new summer educational program after Mancini. On Aug.

"I don't want to get corny, but my career really has been the personification of the American dream." Henry Mancini--"Hank" to his friends--spoke with an almost reverent awe about the past that has led him from Aliquippa, Pa., to Holmby Hills and the top of the film-scoring business. "When I think of what it was like to come out of that little western Pennsylvania steel town in the middle of theDepression and somehow wind up here," he said, shaking his head in disbelief, "it still amazes me."

The first major event in the fifth annual Henry Mancini Institute season at the Wadsworth Theatre Saturday night would have benefited from a bit more participation by the program's talented array of young professional artists. The only portion of the evening devoted to the HMI Orchestra took place in a relatively brief opening segment. And the only substantive music was a collection of pieces from Leonard Bernstein's "On the Town."

There was a cake, there were candles and there was "Happy Birthday," but it wasn't your garden variety birthday party. Henry Mancini celebrated his 70th at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion Tuesday night with some 4,000 friends, collaborators and folks who appreciate his elegant music.

Here's a puzzler: For years, long after he'd knocked out such evergreens as "Moon River," "The Days of Wine and Roses," "Mr. Lucky" and "Charade," Henry Mancini didn't consider himself a songwriter. The prolific 69-year-old--who has written hundreds of songs, scored more than 70 films, recorded 80 albums and been awarded four Oscars and 20 Grammys--says: "I don't know if I've ever written a song that wasn't on assignment .

Henry Mancini turned 70 Saturday and the event will be celebrated Tuesday night in a benefit concert at UCLA Pauley Pavilion. It comes at a particularly difficult time. In February, Mancini was diagnosed as having inoperable cancer. He nonetheless remains alert and optimistic, and is close to completing the music for a Broadway version of "Victor / Victoria." Mancini's list of achievements and honors is long and varied.

Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer won the Oscar for original song for "Moon River" from 1961's "Breakfast at Tiffany's. " Mancini also had another nomination in that same category that year with lyricist Mack David. What was the song and what film did it come from? "Bachelor in Paradise" from "Bachelor in Paradise. "

Television and film music composer Fred Steiner, creator of the bold and gritty theme for the "Perry Mason" TV series and one of the composers of the Oscar-nominated score for "The Color Purple," has died. He was 88. Steiner died of natural causes Thursday at his home in the town of Ajijic in the Mexican state of Jalisco, according to his daughter Wendy Waldman, a singer-songwriter. One of the busiest composers working in Hollywood in the 1950s and '60s, Steiner also crafted music for "Gunsmoke," "The Twilight Zone," "Star Trek," "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Rawhide," "Hogan's Heroes" and other TV series.

Grammy number cruncher: A graphic that accompanied an article about Grammy Award statistics in the Feb. 12 Calendar listed the six artists who were said to have received the most awards in the top three Grammy performance categories: album of the year, record of the year and best new artist. In fact, the list was for most nominations in those categories. Several of the figures were wrong. Frank Sinatra received 15 nominations, not 14; Henry Mancini received seven nominations, not eight; and Paul Simon received 12, not 11, including four, not three, as part of Simon & Garfunkel.

The Henry Mancini Institute, an organization that provided training for Los Angeles-area music students, said Monday it would close at the end of the year. Ginny Mancini, president of the institute's board of directors and widow of the famed composer for which it was named, said the decision was necessitated by the conflict between escalating costs and "the ominous landscape of funding for the arts."

The real stars of the annual Henry Mancini Institute concerts are always the talented young players of the HMI Orchestra. And Saturday night's season-opening event at Royce Hall was no exception. After only five days of rehearsals, the full orchestra sounded remarkably good, the strings vibrant and alive, the winds articulate and beautifully textured. Only a few small uncertainties -- mostly in tricky metric passages -- betrayed the players' relative unfamiliarity with one another.

Stevie Wonder, Alison Krauss and U2 vaulted a few places up the ladder of all-time Grammy winners with their victories Wednesday. Wonder's 23rd and 24th Grammys keep him in fifth place but move him just behind Pierre Boulez and Vladimir Horowitz, who both have 25. Only Georg Solti (31) and Quincy Jones (27) have more. With its five wins, U2 leapfrogs a host of acts and moves past Henry Mancini with 22, just behind Wonder.

The gutsy, driving jazz of "Peter Gunn." The plaintive harmonica melody of "Moon River." The smart-aleck saxophone riffs of "The Pink Panther." The lush string elegance of "Mr. Lucky." The boogie-woogie silliness of "The Baby Elephant Walk." Henry Mancini created all of those musical moods over a six-year period in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Nowadays his tunes are frequently dismissed as "lounge music," the obnoxious and often inaccurate label for so many popular songs of that era.

Gregory Lawrence Jefferson is not your typical 14-year-old. For one thing, his bedroom is tidy . There's a neat rock and baseball card collection on the credenza in one corner, and a synthesizer that stands in another. But his most prized possession is a $3,000 silver flute. Already a Young Musicians Foundation/Henry Mancini scholarship winner, Jefferson is well on his way to a career in music.

The real stars of the Henry Mancini Institute's annual summer conclaves are the talented young players who spend four weeks in a nonstop succession of classes, performances and seminars. And Saturday night at UCLA's Royce Hall, in this year's first presentation by the HMI Orchestra, the most appealing aspect of the evening was the across-the-board musical skill of the ensemble's 80-plus members (who came from 60 American cities and 14 countries).

The closing "Musicale" of the Henry Mancini Institute's summer sessions always provides a broad overview of the program's musicianship, goals and achievements -- with a few high-profile guests added for good measure.