Andrea
Michael Anthony Mangini was born in Newton, Massachusetts, United States, on 18th April 1963. He is a musician, songwriter, and drummer known for progressive metal music. He is the current drummer of the well-known band Dream Theater. Apart from progressive metal, Mangini also plays heavy metal, thrash metal, hard rock, and funk metal.
Michael Anthony started his music industry career about 25 years ago, and he is still strong and exceptional in his music. Mangini’s parents have Italian origin, but he is American by birth. He started playing drums when he was so young – at the age of two and half years.
He got inspiration from Ringo Starr of The Beatles. When he was three years, he started playing drums for at least two hours daily. By the time he was nine, he could mimic Buddy Rich’s performances. His influence also came from Terry Bozzio, Neil Peart, Danny Seraphine, Bobby Colomby, and John Bonham.
When he was in high school, he was already in bands and other institutions. However, after completing high school, he had to abandon music to study computer science at Bentley University. He wrote a program for the Patriot Missile while working on a program that researched the human brain and body links. In 1987, Mangini featured on a high-profile gig playing drums for Boston’s Rick Berlin Band.
This was his first time working with bassist Philip Bynoe. He was a drums teacher for a short period while in Boston. In 1991, Mangini joined Annihilator, which is a thrash metal band. He played drums for this band on several tracks on their album ‘Set the World on Fire.’ He later traveled with the band on their tour in support of the album until later 994 when he joined Boston hard rock band known as Extreme. He joined the Extreme band as a replacement for Paul Geary, and he was involved in three songs on the Extreme’s album, ‘Waiting for the Punchline.’
However, Extreme band was disbanded in 1996, and Jonathan Mover informed Mike that Steve Vai, a guitarist, was doing auditions for a drummer. Vai successfully recruited Mike, and he had to relocate to Los Angeles. However, Mike returned to Boston in 2000 and started working as an associate professor at Berklee College of Music. While teaching in Berklee, he formed the band Tribe of Judah, which survived for a short period.
The band was comprised of former Extreme Gary Cherone and the bassist Pat Badger. In 2005, Berklee employed Mangini on a full-time teaching program in the Percussion Department. However, Mangini thought for five years and later resigned in 2010 after getting into the Dream Theater. Before joining the Dream Theater, some auditions were carried out, and those involved include Derek Roddy, Virgil Donati, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer, Aquiles Priester, and Marco Minnemann.
However, Mangini was chosen as the perfect replacement for Mike Portnoy, and he appeared in every song released by Dream Theater since April 2011. In his fourth album with Dream Theater, Mangini became a lyricist in some of the songs. Mike endorses several drums and hardware, but he commonly uses Pearl drums, hardware, pedals, and percussion. He used Zildjian cymbals, Remo drumheads, Vater sticks, and Shure microphones.
