A TALK WITH DENISE MANGIARDI

I heard my first Freddie Hubbard album when I was a high school senior, and that was it! I love the freedom of jazz. I love the blues because they tell a story. I'm also fond of rock, funk, Latin, and any type of folk music, which carries our most basic cultural feeling and history. Yet jazz is the genre that inspires me to use all my capabilities: composing, putting together a musical group, arranging, and of course using my own instruments: the voice and the piano.

When did you start composing?

I think I was born humming my own tunes. By age 10 I was playing classical music and composing on the piano. At 14 I was playing little clubs, singing my own songs. My influences during the 1970s were folk rockers such as Crosby, Stills and Nash, Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell. I was very influenced by Motown. My sister and I would listen a thousand times over to people like Blind Billy Blake and Lemon Jefferson and I loved Bessie Smith and Billy Holiday. Stevie Wonder was a huge influence. At 17, I debuted at New York's Bitter End. I majored in piano, composition and arranging at Berklee College of Music in Boston. I also studied and have had a number of voice coaches. For me, the composition, singing, and arranging are all part of the big picture of what I'm trying to create. Typically, I introduce the song with singing and then back off and let the players work. I always leave a lot to space for the backing musicians to fill. My focus is on the overall sound and impact of the song.

You're often described as "poetic." Do you write poetry?

No, although I do write some prose. The critics often focus on the lyrics rather than the total sound of the music. When composing, I usually write the music first, then the lyrics. I do have messages in all my songs. It all comes out of my own heart…and soul.

Who where your mentors?

When I was 22 Ellis Larkins, the legendary classical pianist who accompanied such greats as Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Williams, offered to take me under his wing afer he heard me sing. We teamed up for two years. He taught me all about phrasing , simplicity, and every song George Gershwin and Harold Arlen every wrote. Ellis can turn the simplest tune into something that sounds like a Wagnarian symphony. He called me his goddaughter. He was very good to me. We performed in New York at the old Carnegie Tavern, which used to be in the corner of the Carnegie HALL. One day Horace Silver came in and said to me: "You don't' know how lucky you are." But, actually, I did know! Silver was also a great inspiration to me.

Later, I studied improvisation for two years with the tenor saxaphone giant Jerry Bergonzi in Bostn and jazz pianist Garry Dial in New York. Along with Ellis, they taught me the beauty of harmony and I've never turned back from that path. It was a wonderful experience to be offered a hand by these great masters.

As a musician, what obstacles have you met?

 I've  had to fight the notion that the public only wants to hear the same old standards done again and again. As a listener today, I am often uninspired. The music industry is locked into preset patterns and keeps repeating itself. Fortunately, the public isn't as dull as the music business seems to think. I find that audiences are very open to new compositions and unexpected arrangements which I have portrayed in my work. What exactly does the term popular mean? When I was a child I would sit up every night listening to WNEW and was blown away by all the new music that was coming out then. There are some incredibly talented musicians and writers out there just waiting to be heard. I believe that this time will end and that a new swing of music is about to evolve.

What are you working on now?

 I am getting ready to put out my third CD entitled "NAKED TRUTH". It is a joint production between myself and Michael Pellera with whom I have had the great fortune to have had him play and be a part my previous CD's. He and I have a very strong musical relationship and he together with Johnny Vidacovich have been very instrumental in creating the kind of sound that all my CD's possess. The album features Jerry Bergonzi on tenor, Michael Pellera on piano, Bill Huntington on bass ,Johnny Vidacovich on drums. Peter Martin (on piano) is a guest on "Never Let Me Go" and Bill Schultz plays cello on a beautiful song written by Michael Pellera and myself entitled "Requiem". The CD should be out by July,2003. 

I am also writting new music for a CD which I will be playing piano and singing. In the past I have loved writing for other musicians in mind but now I would like to turn a little more inward ,slow it down and find myself again .I'm composing a jazz classical piece for full orchestra. An earlier piece for a string quartet, "City Park," was performed at New Orleans's Ziegiest Theater. I also did the score and vocals for "I Love My Fumily," an animated video by Regina Tierney which played at the Ricco-Maresca Gallery in New York.

You're identified with New Orleans and Denver, and now Paris though you've done a fair amount of work in New York and abroad. Have you been a bit of a vagabond?

I grew up in New York, studied in Boston, and later performed in Melbourne. My husband is Australian. We have two children.We've lived in Australia for three years, Denver for two years, New Orleans on and off for five years, and I've toured Australia. But I do much of my recording and performing in New Orleans, home of many of my musician friends and my musical roots. After living in Paris for two years, I have recently moved to London where
I am appearing regularly on Monday nights at "Jazz after Dark" in Soho.