Web-posted Wednesday, November 5, 2003

	ARTICLE TOOLS E-mail This Article Printer-Friendly Format

Web posted Sunday, October 26, 2003
12:16 a.m. CT

Mancini a treat for her audience
Review

By CHIP CHANDLER
cchandler@amarillonet.com
The Amarillo Globe-News

A good singer makes the listener appreciate a song. A great singer makes a listener rediscover a song.

Monica Mancini is a great singer.

Mancini, daughter of the legendary composer Henry Mancini, sang in a marvelous pops concert with the Amarillo Symphony on Saturday in the Amarillo Civic Center Auditorium.

Her selections, for the most part, were predictable - the classic works of her father, the award-winning musician who scored such films as "The Pink Panther."

But though the selections were expected, the younger Mancini's song stylings were an unforeseen delight.

That was never more true than when she performed "Moon River," perhaps the most famous of her father's songs. Her version wasn't the plush sonic blanket of Andy Williams. Instead, Mancini's smoky voice brought out the deep longing in the lyrics. I've never heard "We're after the same rainbow's end" sung with such pathos.

She brought her gifts to bear on more than just her father's music, though. A quiet version of "Baby Mine" (from Disney's "Dumbo"), performed with the backing of only guitarist Tim McGaughy, was gorgeously intimate. "A Love Before Time," from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," was similarly heartbreaking.

But Mancini especially shined on her father's music - from "Charade" to "Days of Wine and Roses" to "Le Jazz Hot" from "Victor/Victoria."

Providing excellent support were her husband, drummer Gregg Fields, and one of the country's best jazz pianists, Shelly Berg.

That's not to give short shrift to the symphony, which performed to its usual standard of excellence, whether in the rich "Arctic Whale Hunt" from "The White Dawn," in the buoyancy of a march from "The Great Waldo Pepper" or in a suite of compositions from "The Thorn Birds." (Just hearing reserved Maestro James Setapen discuss the deliciously trashy "Thorn Birds" was worth the price of admission alone.)