The event, which marks the centenary of Mancini’s birth and the 30th anniversary of his death, is the highlight of the Victor Young Jazz Festival, which is held on Friday and Saturday in Mława, some 120 kilometres north of Warsaw.
Mancini’s legacy includes the music for The Pink Panther and Peter Gunn series, as well as ‘Moon River’ from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He won four Academy Awards and twenty Grammys.
The concert in tribute to Mancini in Mława features some of the composer’s greatest hits performed by Polish jazzmen Maciej Sikała (saxophone), Kuba Stankiewicz (piano) and Sebastian Frankiewicz (drums), joined by Italian bass player Giuseppe Bassi.
The programme of the festival also includes gigs by the Jakub Hajdun Trio, vocalists Dorota Miśkiewicz and Krystyna Stańko with their groups, as well as jazz workshops run by Giuseppe Bassi, American sax player Andy Middleton and Kuba Stankiewicz.
It was Stankiewicz who almost a decade ago came up with the idea of an event in tribute to Victor Young. He thought that Mława, the birthplace of Young’s Polish ancestors, would be the best venue for the event.
Young himself was born in Chicago in 1899, but was sent to Poland at the age of 10 to stay with his grandfather and study at the Warsaw Conservatory. His teachers included composer Roman Statkowski and violinist Stanisław Barcewicz.
While in his late teens, Young was a violinist with the Warsaw Philharmonic. During his time in Poland he visited Mława.
He returned to the United States in 1920 and soon turned to popular music, moving to Hollywood in the mid-1930s. He composed soundtracks for some 300 films, winning 22 Academy Award nominations. He received his only Oscar posthumously, in 1957, for Around the World in Eighty Days, less than a year after his death, aged 56.
Victor Young Jazz Festival Mława 2024
(mk/mp)