What award doesn’t Clint Eastwood deserve? He’s been
an Oscar-winning director, one of the most recognizable actors in
films, a producer, a military man, a lumberjack and the mayor of
Carmel, a small California town. It’s a shame we won’t
have Dirty Harry on the ballot for governor.
In light of his versatility, it wasn’t all too surprising
when he won the Henry Mancini Institute’s Hank Award for
“distinguished service to American music” on August 16
in the annual Mancini Musicale at Royce Hall. On the music front,
Eastwood has collaborated with Lennie Niehaus on the scores of many
of his films, directed a biopic of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker,
produced a documentary on jazz pianist Thelonius Monk, played jazz
piano in the film “In the Line of Fire,” and even had a
Carnegie Hall concert devoted to his film scores and his love for
jazz. Enough to merit an award?
Why not? One big name begets others, of which the HMI organizers
are obviously well aware. Eastwood and a select crowd of music
philanthropists including Diana Krall, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval
and comedian Craig Kilborn, were in for a rare treat when film
composer Bruce Broughton came out of the woodwork to play with
HMI’s student orchestra, the product of 84 musicians on full
scholarship and four weeks of training at UCLA. Former Hank Award
winner Quincy Jones presented the Hank Award to Eastwood, followed
by the unveiling of the new Henry Mancini stamp honoring the man
who wrote “Moon River” and the “Pink
Panther” theme, among others. Ginny Mancini, the
composer’s surviving spouse, then delivered a
preaching-to-the-choir exhortation to increase music education in
schools.
The concert was a mixed bag of film and TV scores (including
Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme with giddily
slap-happy bassist Abraham Laboriel Sr.), orchestral/big band jazz
featuring a visceral Sandoval as soloist, and, yes, even a Clint
Eastwood tune performed wistfully by sensually soft-spoken
Krall.