Home » Jazz Musicians » Gap Mangione

Gap Mangione


Gap Mangione is a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader from Rochester, New York, United States.

Born and raised in Rochester, Mangione's brother is Grammy-winning flugelhornist Chuck Mangione. Members of a music-loving family, both Gap and Chuck took up instruments. In 1960, they started performing together as the Jazz Brothers, eventually recording three albums for Riverside Records.

In 1968, Gap Mangione released his first solo album, Diana in the Autumn Wind, featuring drummer Steve Gadd and bassist Tony Levin in their first recordings, and new compositions and arrangements by Chuck Mangione who conducted as well. More solo albums followed, along with tours with his own group and many as featured pianist in his brother's orchestral performances throughout the 1970s.

The 1980s saw Mangione settle down to spend more time playing in and around Rochester and less time on the road. In 1990, he formed the Gap Mangione Big Band, which remains the premier dance and concert big band in the Rochester area. The Big Band has released four CDs since 1998.

Today, Mangione continues to make regular appearances at Rochester locations — The Lodge at Woodcliff and the Rochester International Jazz Festival — as well as private gigs; he can be found playing solo, with the 14-piece Big Band, or with a quartet or sextet subset of the band.

Complete itinerary at http://www.gapmangione.com/asp_bin/schedule.asp.

Tags

283
Album Review

Gap Mangione: Family Holidays

Read "Family Holidays" reviewed by Jack Bowers


If this album can be used as evidence, family holidays must have been a blast at the Mangione home in Rochester, NY. Clearly, multi-talented Gap Mangione and his paisanos are having a lot of fun on this engaging album while making beautiful music that embraces not only the Christmas holiday season but several others as well, including a few whose meaning may be clear only to Gap, his friends and family. Among the latter is Leroy Anderson's enchanting “Serenata," which ...

131
Album Review

Gap Mangione: Stolen Moments

Read "Stolen Moments" reviewed by Jack Bowers


There’s an expanse of jazz midway between smooth and straight-ahead, blending elements of both, and that’s roughly the territory that pianist Gap Mangione and his big band most often stake out on Stolen Moments. The playlist consists mainly of contemporary pop/rock themes, some of which lend themselves to big-band interpretations better than others. While Mangione’s ensemble does the best it can with them, the most rewarding tracks by far are those that were written with jazz in mind—Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen ...

226
Album Review

Gap Mangione: Diana in the Autumn Wind

Read "Diana in the Autumn Wind" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Gap and Chuck Mangione roared out of Rochester, NY in 1960 with their exciting Riverside Records debut, The Jazz Brothers, and returned to the studio eight years later to produce Diana in the Autumn Wind under pianist Gap’s name, showcasing his trio on four tracks and a big band conducted by younger brother Chuck on the other eight.

The idea, Gap writes in his updated liner notes, was “to create an album of the music we were playing five nights ...

128
Album Review

Gap Mangione Big Band: Planet Gap

Read "Planet Gap" reviewed by Jack Bowers


My guess would be that most of those who are reading this (if any are, that is) have heard of trumpeter Chuck Mangione. What some may not know is that Chuck has a piano-playing brother, Gap, and that Gap has his own thundering big band. While the notion hardly qualifies as a scientific survey, one may readily infer from the music presented on the band's initial release, Planet Gap, that at least 19 excessively happy people call that planet home. ...

Read more articles
1

Recording

Mangione Brothers: Hey Baby!

Mangione Brothers: Hey Baby!

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Post-war jazz was peppered with fraternal wonders. Among the many families with exceptional jazz siblings in the 1950s were the Montgomerys, the Garners, the Turrentines, the Heaths, the Adderleys, the Joneses (Hank, Thad and Elvin) and the Candolis. Jazz wasn't genetic. In the decade after the end of World War II, music was one of the few ways up and out of crowded households and poverty. Later, of course, would come the Marsalises, the Breckers, the Cohens, the Claytons and ...

Recording

Gap Mangione: Family Holidays

Gap Mangione: Family Holidays

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Each December for the past 11 years, I've carefully chosen a different album for inclusion in my annual JazzWax Vintage Holiday Album Hall of Fame. I established this yule honor in 2008 to steer you to great favorites that may be unknown to you or merely forgotten. My holiday fave this year is Gap Mangione's Family Holidays. Recorded in 2005 at three different studios in Upstate New York for the Josh label, the album features Dennis Tribuzzi, Jeff Jarvis, Jack ...

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Stolen Moments

Josh Music
2004

buy

Family Holidays

Josh Music
2004

buy

Planet Gap

Cafe Records
1998

buy

The Boys From...

Feels So Good Records
1989

buy

Retrospective 2 (1974)

Josh Music Inc.
1987

buy

Similar

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.