‘The Andersons Play Henry Mancini’
Birdland
October 22 & 29

In 1958, the youngish composer Henry Mancini wrote one of his more remarkable works, “Dreamsville,” as part of the suite of instrumental themes he composed for the TV series “Peter Gunn” and the accompanying RCA Victor album. If any one work made Mancini a star, it was “Peter Gunn,” and “Dreamsville” in particular was immediately picked up by other musicians. 

A few years later, Quincy Jones produced two entirely different interpretations a few months apart from each other, one featuring the multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk and the other spotlighting the great Sarah Vaughan. It’s easy to see why “Dreamsville” is so beloved; it’s both a beautiful melody and a kind of all-enveloping soundscape: Its shimmering textures and relaxed, almost motionless tempo make it feel as much like a painting in sound as a song. 

Clearly this is Mancini’s homage to Gil Evans, Claude Thornhill, and the Miles Davis “Birth of the Cool” band, and it was like nothing else Mancini ever wrote — as well as a reminder that everything he wrote was great.

“Dreamsville” was performed by the formidable multi-reed duo Peter and William Anderson this week at Birdland as part of their ongoing celebration of the Henry Mancini centennial, and they’ll do so again on Tuesday and a week later. Although only three minutes long, it was a highlight of the program: Pianist Steve Ash perfectly captured the twinkling, sparkling mood, and Will Anderson created a virtual dreamscape on his tenor saxophone.

“The Andersons Play Henry Mancini” reinforces the notion that Mancini was perhaps the only major composer in American music apart from Duke Ellington who started as a jazz musician and never quite left the sound of jazz behind even as he attained the upper brackets of Hollywood and the hit parade. Like Ellington, Mancini was both a jazz composer and a pop songwriter from the very beginning to the end of his career — both of his most famous film themes, “Peter Gunn” and “The Pink Panther,” are based in the blues.

The general impression one gets from the show is that plenty of Mancini’s classic film themes are pure jazz from the get-go, while nearly all of the others can become jazz with just a little push in that direction. The show begins with one of Mancini’s earlier hits, the main title music for the 1959 TV series “Mr. Lucky.” As heard in the show, it’s a glistening, catchy theme with a distinctive novelty edge, part of the same general continuum as the orchestral works of Leroy Anderson. Yet the Andersons charge into it with bebop energy aplenty, so there’s no doubting that this is a perfect piece for a modern jazz ensemble.

The Andersons’ arrangements are written for a frontline of two reeds — the musicians are constantly switching between saxophones, flutes, and clarinets — and trumpeter Joe Boga, best known to Birdland habitues as a regular with Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks. The rhythm section is bassist Paul Gill and another Nighthawk, drummer Paul Wells, in addition to Mr. Ash on piano.

Mancini grew up in the swing era and came of age musically in the big bands, but he studied classical music as well. His film themes were informed by yet another strain of music — international sounds. The Andersons stressed how jazz elements interact with world music elements in many of his best-known works: “It Had Better Be Tonight (Meglio stasera)” was written to sound like background music from a Frederico Fellini movie, to the extent that Mancini and collaborator Johnny Mercer commissioned an original Italian lyric from Franco Migliacci, co-author of what was then the most famous Italian song in the world, “Volare.”  

Likewise, for “Baby Elephant Walk” Mancini not only employed African percussion instruments but had the melody played on what sounds like South African pennywhistle; the Andersons played it on a combination of flute and clarinet. “Tiber Twist,” a theme from “The Pink Panther,” features Peter Anderson playing R&B tenor in roughly the style of Mancini’s celebrated saxophonist Plas Johnson, and Mr. Gill played a fast and swinging solo arco with his bow — a very unusual choice.  Between them they caught the spirit of cross-continental go-go dance music, even quoting “O Sole Mio.”

“Lujon,” a theme from Mancini’s album “Mr. Lucky Goes Latin,” which eventually evolved into the song “Slow, Hot Wind” — recorded memorably by Sarah Vaughan on her classic 1963 “Mancini Songbook” album — served as a feature for Will Anderson’s clarinet and the rhythm section. Mancini’s Oscar-winning waltz, “Moon River,” became an even more intimate duo for Peter Anderson and on soprano saxophone and Mr. Ash. 

Throughout his lifetime, Mancini’s work was most keenly appreciated by two rather disparate groups, the Hollywood community — who rewarded him with four Oscars — and the jazz musicians. Following his death at age 70 in 1994, there were a spate of major albums by important musicians, including James Moody’s “Moody Plays Mancini” (1997), vibes master Joe Locke’s “Moment To Moment – The Music Of Henry Mancini” (1995), “Phil Woods and Carl Saunders Play Henry Mancini” (2004), and Ted Nash’s “The Mancini Project” (2007).

The 14 songs arranged by the Anderson Brothers in their show are easily good enough to be an album. This would be a very good thing: It’d be nice to be able to travel back to “Dreamsville” anytime I wanted.