Biography
Tony d'Amato held the position of Britain's foremost producer of light classical music for nearly twenty years. Beyond the major sales he achieved alongside such figures as Mantovani, Frank Chacksfield, and Stanley Black, he also introduced technical advances, most notably the distinctive ping-pong stereo method that defined the Phase 4 catalog. Born in New York City on January 21, 1931, he first enrolled at NYU and later continued at the Juilliard Conservatory of Music, concentrating on composition and piano. While still a student he received a Marine Corps draft notice, after which he spent two years overseeing a service newspaper issued from Laguna Beach, CA. During this period he also completed an opera drawn from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. In the autumn of 1958 he joined London Records, where executive Marty Wargo assigned him a range of tasks that included shooting cover photographs and drafting liner notes; only afterward did he receive approval to helm recording sessions of his own. Working alongside arranger Ronny Roullier, he advanced stereo techniques beyond mere novelty, applying multi-channel methods and other refinements that London marketed as "ffss -- full-frequency stereophonic sound." Releases on the Phase 4 series, including Bob Sharples' Pass in Review, earned both critical praise from audiophiles and strong commercial returns, prompting the label to send him to Britain in 1961 to join the parent Decca Records staff. There he was paired with Mantovani, whose Italian lineage paralleled his own and helped forge a lasting partnership that produced dozens of light orchestral albums, many of which reached the Top 40. Additional best-sellers followed with Chacksfield, Black, Ronnie Aldrich, Maurice Larcange, classical composer Leopold Stokowski, and film composer Bernard Herrmann. As rock and its derivatives displaced light music from the charts, d'Amato left the industry in 1978; after time spent in Winnipeg he and his family relocated to Long Island, where he advised the Mantovani Orchestra following the conductor's death in 1980. He also supplied substantial material to the 2005 biography Mantovani: A Lifetime in Music, issued to mark the centenary of his longtime colleague's birth. D'Amato passed away on Long Island on July 7, 2006.