Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini ( ; born Enrico Nicola Mancini, ; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His works include the theme and soundtrack for the Peter Gunn television series as well as the music for The Pink Panther film series ("The Pink Panther Theme") and "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's. The Music from Peter Gunn won the inaugural Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Mancini enjoyed a long collaboration in composing film scores for the film director Blake Edwards. Mancini also scored a No. 1 hit single during the rock era on the Hot 100: his arrangement and recording of the "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" spent two weeks at the top, starting with the week ending June 28, 1969. Early life Henry Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in Maple Heights, Ohio, and raised in West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Both his parents were Italian immigrants. Originally from Scanno, Abruzzo, his father Quintiliano "Quinto" Mancini was a laborer at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company and amateur musician who first came to the U.S. as a teenager around 1910. His mother Anna came to the U.S. from Forlì del Sannio as an infant. At age eight, Mancini began learning the piccolo. Mancini said that hearing Rudolph G. Kopp's score in the 1935 Cecil B. DeMille film The Crusades inspired him to pursue film music composition despite his father's wishes for him to become a teacher.