DUO COMPOSES 'KING' TO A DIFFERENT BEAT.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

If their assignment had simply been to adapt the score of a movie to fit a big-budget, Broadway-style musical, composers Mark Mancina and Lebo Morake likely would have passed. Even to Disney.

They had traveled this road before, both having worked on the Grammy- winning score of Disney's 1994 animated movie, ``The Lion King.'' Neither man professes to be at home with the demands of musical theater. Not Mancina, the Orange County-raised composer who has worked on film scores like ``Twister'' and ``Con Air.'' Nor Morake, the South African-born composer and performer who goes by ``Lebo M.'' In fact, a visit to a handful of Broadway musicals quickly convinced Mancina and Lebo that neither man had much of a future in conventional musical theater.

``We went to three or four shows in New York, but we just didn't feel gratified. Maybe we picked the wrong ones,'' says Mancina, declining to name them. ``So we decided to just write whatever we wanted, and figured they'd ax about 20 percent of what we had done. They didn't take out anything. Everything was as we had written it.''

Fortunately, director Julie Taymor - charged with reinventing ``The Lion King'' for the stage - wasn't trying to do ``Brigadoon.'' Nor did she want a veritable film-to-stage blueprint, a la ``Beauty and the Beast,'' with chorus after chorus of familiar Top 40 hits like ``Can You Feel the Love Tonight'' and ``Circle of Life.''

Certainly those numbers, written by Elton John and Tim Rice, would have a place in the stage ``Lion King,'' but just as important to Taymor was the score of a ``Rhythm of the Pride Lands,'' a follow-up album to the animated ``Lion King'' soundtrack created by Mancina and Lebo.

``The gates were wide open,'' recalls Mancina. ``She wanted me to create a bit of textured landscape, and Lebo came in and had his vocal ideas on top of it. Julie was so open to ideas, she couldn't get enough. That fueled Lebo and me to keep writing, piece after piece after piece.''

As the two men tell it, on the day they met Taymor, they sat down at a piano and started musical brainstorming from the beginning of the show. Significant portions of the ``Pride Lands'' album found their way into the stage score, including the Mancina-written ``He Lives in You'' and ``Shadowland.'' The John-Rice team wrote three new songs (``Morning Report,'' ``Chow Down'' and ``The Madness of King Scar''), and Lebo wrote a new number called ``One by One.''

Lebo also arranged the chants and African choral pieces, including the Zulu chant that opens ``Circle of Life'' at the beginning of the show. Hans Zimmer and Jay Rifkin are also credited on the score.

``There are a lot of names listed there,'' Mancina says. ``People might think, 'Gee, it took 20 people to write this thing.' Not to take away from anybody, but the reality of it it was Lebo and I and Julie in a room from beginning to end. It was our responsibility to build it from the ground up.''

New music meant new arrangements, new instruments and the opportunity to - at least musically speaking - go a little bit wild. Audiences will hear all the traditional musical sounds from the orchestra pit, but also instruments from around the world - congas to rain sticks, from nut shell shakers to cow bells and Chinese gongs.

Having now mounted productions of ``The Lion King'' in London, Toronto, Japan and New York, the composers know the sounds they're looking for. While Taymor and her scenic crew handle the look of ``The Lion King,'' it is Lebo and Mancina who are primarily in charge of getting the sound up to snuff. That means making sure the production fits into its largest house to date (2,700 seats), as well as selecting and hiring the musicians and conductor, and breaking in the chorus that will handle the African rhythms. Lebo was in the chorus of the original Broadway cast along with his wife, Nandi.

And if he talks with a certain reverence toward the project, it's because Lebo identifies with the story of Simba, a noble cub with a lofty pedigree.

``Even doing the movie was a personal journey for me,'' said Lebo, who left his homeland in South Africa at the age of 14. ``I know what it's like to be living in exile.''

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Photo:

Lebo Morake, left, and Mark Mancina added the African rhythms to Disney's ``The Lion King,'' which opens Thursday in L.A.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer