Photay turns Chuck Mangione’s 1973 warmth into a Monday reset
Get your week started right and tight. This Music Monday belongs to Photay, the electronic project of Evan Shornstein, and his warm, transportive new cover of Chuck Mangione’s “Land of Make Believe.”
Released on August 6, 2026 via Mexican Summer, Photay’s 5:51 rendition does not simply borrow the title and melody. It reaches directly back to the version that has lived in his head for years: Mangione’s expansive 1973 live performance at Massey Hall in Toronto.
That original recording paired Mangione’s flugelhorn and orchestral arranging with Esther Satterfield’s vocals, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra and the persistent samba rhythm that Photay points to as one of the song’s great emotional engines. More than five decades later, he has rebuilt that feeling through his own electronic language without sanding away the hope sitting at the center of the composition.
MUSIC MONDAY
Step into the Land of Make Believe.
Start with Photay’s new tribute, then circle back to the Chuck Mangione recording that inspired it.
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A favorite recording becomes a tribute to Chuck Mangione
Photay explains the connection in his own release note:
“It’s a true gift to discover a song, in the vast sea of recorded music, that lifts your mind, body, and soul at the very moment you need it most. For me, and for so many others, one of those songs is ‘The Land of Make Believe’ by Chuck Mangione. You don’t need to look far to feel how deeply this piece has touched hearts since its debut in 1973. I’ve always wanted to pay tribute by covering my favorite version, Live at Massey Hall, with its persistent samba rhythm and full orchestra embrace. I hope future generations discover the unconditional warmth and genuine hope carried within this music. Rest in peace, Chuck Mangione. Thank you for your timeless gift.”
Photay
The tribute lands with extra weight now. Chuck Mangione died July 22, 2025, at age 84, closing a career that stretched across more than 30 albums, two Grammy wins and one of the most recognizable flugelhorn sounds in popular music. “Feels So Good” may be the title most casual listeners know first, but Land of Make Believe belongs to an earlier stretch of his catalog where jazz, pop, orchestration and unabashed optimism were already happily ignoring the walls between genres.
Photay is a particularly good artist to pick up that thread. His own records have always been interested in rhythm as something physical and emotional at the same time — electronic music that can get delightfully strange without forgetting that a body is supposed to move to it.
Here, that instinct meets Mangione’s melody in exactly the right place. The cover feels reverent without becoming museum-piece precious. It still breathes. It still sways. And most importantly, it preserves the thing Photay heard in the original in the first place: unconditional warmth and genuine hope.
Which is about as good a reason as any to hit play on a Monday.
Watch Photay’s “Land of Make Believe” Visualizer
Photay’s 2026 rendition reimagines Chuck Mangione’s 1973 composition through the rhythmic, electronic lens of his own production.
Sources: Photay; Mexican Summer; Chuck Mangione official site; Qobuz.
