Rick Braun Plays Chuck Mangione (4:30pm)

Over three decades, 20+ albums and more than 20 #1 Billboard hits into one of contemporary jazz’s most inspiring, prolific and genre-defining careers, Rick Braun pours his creative heart and soul into his first-ever tribute album, paying homage to one of his all-time musical heroes on Rick Braun Plays Chuck Mangione.

Upon Mangione’s passing in July 2025, the veteran trumpeter and flugelhornist – with the help of his son, Kyle – reflected upon the legendary artist with a thoughtful Facebook post featuring an impromptu performance of the Grammy winning Billboard Top 5 classic “Feels So Good” accompanied by a powerful personal memory of the one time he met Mangione in person.

In 2007, when both Mangione and Braun (with BWB) were performing the Long Beach Jazz Festival, Braun mustered the courage to knock on the door of the icon’s trailer and introduce himself. Mangione greeted him warmly and the two talked of their mutual connection to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where Mangione earned his degree and later returned to become a professor and first director of the Eastman Jazz Ensemble, leaving the year before Braun enrolled as a student there. Before Braun left to get ready for his show, Mangione bestowed an incredible gift upon him – his cherished Giardinelli flugelhorn mouthpiece with “CM” inscribed on it.

Braun never saw Mangione again, but he played his own horns with the mouthpiece every so often. When he decided, not long after posting the Facebook video, to create a full-blown project dedicated to Mangione’s music, he created a beautiful sense of continuity by playing it on every track.

“Ironically, I had been performing ‘Feels So Good’ in my live shows for a year before Chuck passed,” Braun says. “When I put the mouthpiece in my horn to play it for the social media tribute, I reflected that he once played this regularly and now it's in my hands. It was an emotional moment for me – and suddenly it hit me that someone should give his amazing body of music a fresh revisit and pay tribute.

“I thought back to when I discovered his music at Eastman and how much I loved his song ‘Land of Make Believe” in particular,” he adds. “Chuck was the first non-straight ahead horn player I embraced when I started to play the flugelhorn. It has such a warm, welcoming sound. I thought about Chuck’s impact on the pop-influenced contemporary jazz sound and feel that what set him apart from other pioneers in the genre is the overwhelming sense of happiness that prevails in his music. When I began re-exploring his melodies for the album, they brought back wonderful memories, but more importantly, gave me a great sense of joy.”

Not surprisingly considering the enduring impact of Mangione’s music, the effect he had on Braun’s life and the desire to do the songs justice, Braun adds that more than with any other project he’s worked on his career, this one truly “took me over” and inspired him to work diligently to get every detail just right. Significantly, he is playing the same Couesnon flugelhorn he played as a student at Eastman and later with the band Auracle in the late 70s. He thought perhaps he had sold it during his lean years, but his wife Christiane found it in a box in their attic a few years ago and Braun has performed with it regularly since.

Ultimately narrowing down to nine from an original list of 20 potential songs, he produced the first two no-brainers – “Land of Make Believe” and “Give It All You Got” – with keyboardist Philippe Saisse. “Land…” features soaring orchestration, Saisse’s hoppin’ piano solo and a section for Braun’s fascinating flugelhorn/trombone duality. The funky from the get-go “Give It All You Got” (Mangione’s second Billboard Hot 100 pop hit) includes a powerhouse sax solo by the great Tom Scott, who then doubles with Braun’s horn over the jangling guitar of Tony Pulizzi and a buoyant groove created by the project’s core rhythm section of Darryl Williams (bass), Gorden Campbell (drums) and Lenny Castro (percussion).

Besides Saisse, one of Braun’s first calls for Rick Braun Plays Chuck Mangione was guitarist Grant Geissman, who played with Mangione during his pop heyday of 1976-80 and created the iconic solo on the single version of “Feels So Good.” Rather than try to recreate the performance for the album, Geissman chose to contribute his inimitable guitarisma to one of his all-time favorite Mangione tunes, the soulful ballad “Doin’ Everything With You” in addition to two songs from the flugelhornist’s landmark 1978 soundtrack album Children of Sanchez that Geissman had appeared on – the dreamy, seductive “Bellavia” and the epic, seven minute plus “Children of Sanchez,” which features Geissman’s inimitable Spanish guitar magic.

Nearly 20 years after Braun and saxophonist Richard Elliot scaled the contemporary jazz charts with their #1 dual album R n R, the two continue their spirit of dynamic collaborations on both the amped up arrangement of “Feels So Good” and the longing romantic ballad “Do I Dare to Fall in Love.” Elliot showcases two distinct sides of his artistry, with a blazing solo (followed by explosive, soaring horn harmonies with Braun) on “Feels So Good” and a smokier, restrained section on “Do I Dare…” Braun adds a free form horn-keyboard intro to “Feels So Good” to pay respects to the understated flugelhorn-acoustic guitar intro on the original album version by Mangione and Geissman.

Another special guest is Grammy nominated flutist (and prolific film score contributor) Steve Kujala, Braun’s onetime bandmate in Auracle, who adds grace and punch to the coolly throbbing, easy swinging “Long Hair Soulful” and fashions a colorful flute-flugelhorn conversation with Braun on the edgy, hypnotic ballad “Love Wears No Disguise.” Other contributors include bassist/drummer Alex Bailey, bassist Nate Phillips, keyboardist Carnell Harrell, French Horn player Tiffany Johns and trombonist Nick Lane.

Rick Braun Plays Chuck Mangione marks an auspicious beginning for Rick Braun’s fourth decade of recording. The Allentown PA native set the stage for his early 90s emergence as one of contemporary jazz’s most popular and impactful artists with a successful career in pop music during the 80s, writing, co-writing REO Speedwagon’s Top 20 Billboard hit “Here With Me” and working in the studio and/or on tour with everyone from Crowded House to superstars Natalie Cole, Glenn Frey, Tom Petty, Sade, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner and War. In addition to genre-defining solo albums Beat Street (1995), Full Stride (1998), Kisses in the Rain (2000), All It Takes (2009), Around the Horn (2017), Crossroads (2019), his self-titled 2022 album, hit dual releases with Boney James (2000’s Shake It Up) and Richard Elliot (2007’s RnR), and three albums with the all-star trio BWB alongside Grammy winners Kirk Whalum and Norman Brown, he has produced recordings for David Benoit, Marc Antoine, Peter White and the late Jeff Golub, among others.

“As I was playing Chuck’s melodies and improvising over them, I loved how they brought me back to those days when I first heard them and made me think of the gifts he left us and how they inspired my own playing on the flugelhorn. I thought about that incredible moment he invited me into his dressing room, how I looked up to him for so long, and approached this project with the same sense of reverence and awe. I like to imagine him hearing the album and accepting it warmly, maybe even giving me a hug and saying, ‘Good job, Rick!’”