6,000 Turn Out for Chuck Mangione
by Deborah Tocci, The Post-Star, August 26, 1977
The cards came up “a full house” for Chuck Mangione at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Tuesday night.
More than 6,000 people turned out to hear the music of this talented musician-composer and his group – filling the seats in the amphitheater and the lower half of the lawn. It was a major tribute to the growing popularity of the young flugelhorn player, whose first concert at SPAC in 1972 was attended by only 800 people.
Mangione, who alternated between playing the electric piano and the flugelhorn (a cross between a trumpet and a French horn with attributes of both) during the performance, was accompanied by his regular group — a quartet made up of guitar, bass, drums and reed instruments; a 15-piece brass section which he calls upon for special concerts like this one at SPAC, and his brother, Gap Mangione, on electric keyboard. Gap usually performs with a group of his own.
The entire program, which lasted more than three hours, consisted of music written by Chuck Mangione, himself, and proved that he is really one of the major composer-musicians of the 1970’s.
Most of Mangione’s pieces have vivid and imaginative names like “Song of the New Moon,” “Chase the Clouds Away” and “The Morning After Our First Night Together” and vivid and imaginative music that goes along with those names. Almost all of his compositions are based upon a Latin-rock rhythmic concept, with the bass providing the pulsing 1-2 rhythm of the Latin tempos and the drums giving a steady, chopping rock beat. The harmonies and melodies provided by the other instruments float over the pulsing rhythms, and sequences of staccato notes separated by short pauses follow one after the other, giving many of his songs a gay, bouncing effect.
In the arrangement of his compositions, Mangione sometimes emphasizes a single instrument, with frequent solos by himself on the flugelhorn, Chris Vadala on the clarinet or flute, and Grant Geissman on guitar. But then suddenly the music switches from the soloist and Mangione; the quartet and the full brass section all join forces, creating a rich and powerful sound revealing somewhat the influence of trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, with whom Mangione played before he started out on his own.
Between numbers, Chuck Mangione, dressed in a bright jumpsuit and the floppy brown hat which is his trademark, chatted and philosophized with the crowd. He said because he felt secure at SPAC, he was going to try out two numbers which he and his group had never performed before an audience. One of the songs was so new that it was still unnamed. Referred to as Song 2, it turned out to be a pretty thing reminiscent of echoes across a lake and was received warmly by the audience.
During the second half of the program, Mangione introduced his parents, to whom he is very close, and then played his Grammy Award-winning composition entitled “Bella Via,” written in honor of his mother.
The first half of the program was concluded by Mangione’s well-known composition, “Legend of the One-Eyed Sailor,” and the last half was brought to a dramatic conclusion with his best-known and perhaps most effective piece, “Land of Make Believe.”
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