George Gershwin 🎹🎼🎶

Celebrating the 123rd anniversary of George Gershwin’s birth, on the 26/9/1898

An iconic figure in American contemporary jazz and classical music, George Gershwin was a composer and pianist of international fame, with a significant number of songs, orchestral and jazz works making him one of the most successful and recognisable musicians of the last century. His compositions have been used as soundtracks for movies and television, while his jazz standards have been covered by many interpreters in a huge number of variations,

Born on 26 September 1898 in New York, in a Ukrainian-Jewish family that had recently migrated from Eastern Europe and had settled in around the area of the Yiddish Theatre District. Together with his older brother, Ira, they established a formidable duo who composed some of the most popular hits in Broadway musicals in the period in between the two World Wars. Their partnership generated a multitude of successful songs that, in many variations by very admired interpreters, are now part of the standard jazz and popular repertoire.

In the mid-1920s George Gershwin spent some time in Europe to train in musical studies, Amongst his potential tutors also Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger who recognised his musical genius and did not want to interfere with his natural talent. It is during this period that Gershwin composed the Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris which are genial compositions blending elements of jazz and classical music in a revolutionary fashion.

A production of Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess by the Metropolitan of New York

In 1934 a partnership between George Gershwin and novelist DuBose Heyward brought to the stage Porgy and Bess, as an opera based on a folk tale and a successful novel. Initially critical reception was not too positive but with time this opera has become an established classic and one of its songs, Summertime, is an all time favourite, with countless covers in many different styles.

Below is a video featuring the song Summertime from Porgy and Bess, interpreted by Haroline Blackwell in a production by the Glyndebourne Festival and the Philarmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.