The Grammy-winning jazz musician and composer Chuck Mangione died on Tuesday, according to a statement from his family. He was 84.
“The family of Chuck Mangione is deeply saddened to share that Chuck peacefully passed away in his sleep at his home in Rochester, New York on July 22, 2025,” his family said in a statement released on Thursday to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
A spokesperson for the celebrated flugelhorn and trumpet player also confirmed the news to People Magazine, and a message on Mangione’s official website reads: “We are very sorry. Chuck Mangione has passed.”
Mangione was born on 29 November 1940, in Rochester, New York. According to his Rochester Music Hall of Fame biography, his father introduced him and his brother, pianist Gap Mangione, to jazz early on.
“Growing up in a home steeped in jazz, Chuck and his brother Gap would listen to their father’s jazz albums while other kids their age were listening to Elvis or Jerry Lee Louis [sic],” the biography states. “Their father encouraged the boys’ appreciation for jazz and would take them to Sunday afternoon matinees at jazz clubs around the city.”
The biography also states that their father would “invite these amazing artists to come home with them for a good home-cooked Italian meal” and that Mangione “grew up thinking everyone had Carmen McRae and Art Blakey over for dinner”.
Mangione got his start in high school playing trumpet in a jazz band with his brother called the Jazz Brothers, per his website.
He later studied at the Eastman School of Music, graduating in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in music. According to his music hall of fame biography, he later returned to the school in 1968 to direct the school’s jazz ensemble and to help expand the school’s jazz program until 1972.
Mangione then launched a successful solo career, releasing more than 30 albums, and selling millions of records. He received 13 Grammy nominations, according to this biography, and won two Grammy Awards, one in 1977 for Bellavia, and the other in 1979 for The Children of Sanchez.
His 1977 album Feels So Good became one of the most successful jazz records ever produced, according to the Rochester Music Hall of Fame. And in 1980, he performed at the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.
In 2009, Mangione donated some of his music memorabilia to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC. He was inducted into the Rochester Music Hall of Fame in 2012.
In their statement announcing his death on Thursday, Mangione’s family said: “Chuck’s love affair with music has been characterized by his boundless energy, unabashed enthusiasm, and pure joy that radiated from the stage.”
They added: “His appreciation for his loyal worldwide fans was genuine as evidenced by how often he would sit at the edge of the stage after a concert for however long it took to sign autographs for the fans who stayed to meet him and the band.”
