GLENDALE : Ex-Big Band Player Takes Music to Streets

Seven years ago at age 57, Mario D’Anna bet his friends that he could learn to play the violin.

D’Anna, who abandoned the instrument as a child, won the wager. But you won’t see the former big band bass player in any concert halls--his listeners are on the streets.

“I almost got discouraged,” said the 64-year-old Echo Park man, who plays every Thursday in Glendale along Brand Boulevard.

“My fingers weren’t moving right, but I stuck with it,” he said. “All I did was just practice violin.”

When D’Anna was 5 years old in New Jersey, his father, a mandolin player, tried to teach him to play the violin. But by the time he was 16, he was an accomplished bass player. He joined the army that year, performing in military bands.

From 1949 to 1977, he said, he continued playing bass professionally for various big bands. Since 1991, D’Anna has taken his musical talents to the streets of Los Angeles, Glendale and parts of the San Fernando Valley. He says he can play between 250 and 300 tunes.

“When you play on the streets, you get to learn what they like, what they don’t like,” said the father of two. “They seem to like the show tunes. I do ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ I play stuff from the ‘40s. I give people a lot of nostalgia--something old, something new.”

D’Anna usually plays his violin tunes in front of Damon’s Steak House on Brand Boulevard, where owners have allowed him to perform before the restaurant opens for lunch.

“It sounds fair to me,” said Gary Beachnaw, manager. “At least he’s trying. At least he’s making something of his talent.”