Mangione Enthralls Audience
by Edward French, The Knickerbocker News, June 19, 1973
In spite of far from propitious weather conditions, the Chuck Mangione Concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center found the big auditorium comfortably filled.
Practically all of the numbers were composed or arranged by Chuck Mangione, a very gifted and imaginative musician with a highly original harmonic sense.
HE PUTS on a good show—the stage was filled with musicians, instruments and electronic equipment; it seems that popular entertainers can’t exist without a lot of amplification. For this program his usual combo was augmented by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra (of Canada), a good-sized choral group and soloists.
In addition to directing, Mangione did solo bits on an electric piano and his speciality, a flugelhorn, a brass instrument similar to the trumpet but more mellow in tone. This he used effectively in the opening “One Eyed Sailor.”
Legacy was a fine showcase for the varied talents of Gerry Niewood, a first-class virtuoso on soprano saxophone and equally proficient on the bass flute. His rhythmic improvisations were spontaneous and exciting.
CHORUS and orchestra joined in a high-spirited performance of the Floria from the Mass of St. Bernard, a work using a jazz idiom in an old ecclesiastical form a la Bernstein. Thanks partially to amplification, the volume was literally deafening.
El Gate Triste was a sentimental melodious piece featuring Cathy Lehr as solo cellist. Her playing was tastefully expressive. This arrangement used the strings the way Kostelantz did in his lush transcriptions for radio.
ESTHER Seaterfield and Don Potter were the vocalists, the former a vivacious young lady with a lot of personality. The audience loved her, and our only reservation was that, partly because of over-amplification a good many of the lyrics were lost.
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