MANCINI RELUCTANT TO GO ELECTRONIC

It’s hard to believe, but nearly three decades have passed since Henry Mancini gave television a thundering musical shot in the arm with his sledge-hammer jazz score for the private eye series “Peter Gunn.”

The composer of that pounding asphalt jungle beat turned 62 last month and he’s still in the fast lane. Mancini barrels into town Friday on the tail end of a week of one-night stands. Last week he blasted off from his home in Los Angeles on a whizzing conducting tour that sent him to San Juan, Puerto Rico; Worcester, Mass.; Wolf Trap Farm in Virginia, and Toronto. By 8 p.m. Friday when he steps up to the podium at Symphony Hall, Mancini should be well-rehearsed for the set of movie and television theme songs he will repeat Saturday and Sunday.

Mancini spoke briefly about the changing world of music over the phone before he left on the tour. Electronics have brought the big change in music during his lifetime, he said.

“It’s affected all areas of music. There’s nothing you can do except to pick it up and find out how to use it,” he said. Mancini isn’t that crazy about synthesizers, but when a piece calls for it, “I get with the boys I know who do know synthesizers, and I can work it out.”

Born in Cleveland, he trained at Juilliard in New York, then in Los Angeles with Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ernst Krenek and Alfred Sendrey. Among his pre-synthesizer tunes are the themes for “The Pink Panther,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Mr. Lucky.” He also wrote the themes for four current television shows, including “Hotel.”

Mancini prefers acoustic instruments. “I still get a kick seeing how close to perfect a really good orchestra can get when you’re working with 100 men and women and not depending on the one push of the keyboard. The orchestra is still the yardstick.”

AUDUBON, TOO: What’s this? The great naturalist and noted artist John James Audubon will make an appearance at the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park during the run of the traveling exhibition “Audubon: Science Into Art,” opening Saturday.

It won’t be the real Audubon, who died in 1851, but a reasonable facsimile, dressed in 19th-Century frontier garb designed for tromping through the woods and classifying and naming the birds of America. Museum docent John Shappell has practiced his role as Audubon for four months.

Shappell/Audubon will be in attendance on June 14 and 28 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and on July 5, 12, 19 and 26 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the show contains 60 items, including original Audubon oil paintings and drawings, and such Audubon artifacts as his palette, maps and favorite gun, “Long Tom.” The show closes July 31.

DOWN HOME: Great balls of fire! San Diego theaters are going to get down with that good ol’ country living this summer. The San Diego Repertory Theatre leads off Friday night at the new Lyceum Theatre with “Quilters,” a musical about frontier women that features an on-stage fiddle band.

A week later the Rep follows up on the smaller Lyceum Space stage with “Holy Ghosts,” a tall tale set in Appalachia that is about Pentecostal snake handlers.

The La Jolla Playhouse gets in on the fun when its season opens June 3 with “Shout Up a Morning,” a world premiere of a musical about legendary steel-driving John Henry.

The Old Globe re-heats its down-home musical cooking when it reopens “Pump Boys and Dinettes,” June 12 at the San Diego State University Main Stage Theatre.

All three theaters report that subscription sales have surpassed last year’s totals. Last week the Globe hit 18,632 subscriptions, the Rep is above 8,100 and the Playhouse hit the 7,600 mark, leaving only 400 full five-play subscriptions to sell.

PAAB BEAT: Beginning Thursday the Public Arts Advisory Board for the San Diego City Council will hold three meetings to solicit public input regarding methods of achieving the goals identified in its master arts plan for the city.

Thursday’s meeting will be at 7 p.m. in Room 169 at the Educational Cultural Complex, 4343 Ocean View Blvd. Subjects for discussion will be cultural exchange, technical assistance, minority arts and promotion.

At 3 p.m. Friday at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, 547 4th Ave., the topics will be arts funding, youth programs, city liaison with the arts community and cooperative programs with San Diego County.

At the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, the discussion will include facilities, city funding, performing arts programs and arts planning processes.

ARTBEATS: Fresh from her duties conducting the rib-rattling, ear-stretching modern opera “The Lighthouse,” the San Diego Opera’s associate conductor, Karen Keltner, flies to Texas Saturday to conduct the Houston Grand Opera rehearsals for “Anna Bolena” before the arrival of maestro Richard Bonynge, who will conduct the performances while his wife, Joan Sutherland, sings. Keltner will shift to the prompter’s box to assist any singer with memory problems. . . .

The San Diego Gilbert & Sullivan Co. has signed former D’Oyly Carte Opera Company principal Kenneth Sandford to direct the G & S operetta “The Gondoliers” June 20 to 29 at the Casa del Prado Theatre in Balboa Park. When Sandford sang with the now-defunct English troupe, he played such roles as Pooh Bah, Sir Despard, King Hildebrand, Private Willis and Don Alhambra in “The Gondoliers.”