The Gershwin Initiative’s own Lisa Keeney (lead editorial assistant and saxophonist) sat down in August 2016 to talk with Grammy award-winning saxophonist Timothy McAllister as a promotion for our September 2016 concert with the University of Michigan’s University Symphony Orchestra (USO). The USO premiered both the new edition of Concerto in F and the Unabridged Edition of An American in Paris. This program also featured Adams’ The Chairman Dances, and his Saxophone Concerto with soloist Timothy McAllister, for whom the concerto was written. We are delighted today to bring you the extended cut of the interview.  It is broken into three parts […]

  George Gershwin is well-known for his mixed use of popular and traditional idioms. But what was his personal attitude towards contemporary composers, and how did this influence his approach towards composition? Take a look at how An American in Paris, situated at a critical point in George’s career, reflects both his developing tastes and shifting musical ambitions. By Cassidy Goldblatt George Gershwin began his career in the streets of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway, writing songs inspired by his love of jazz. Yet popular genres could only capture his attention for so long, and he soon felt the itch […]

Today we’d like to share the wonderful piece Marilou Carlin wrote to feature our upcoming test performenace here in Ann Arbor.  This story first featured on the UM Arts and Culture page, which is well worth a visit! September 15, 2016 By Marilou Carlin George Gershwin (left), James Rosenberg, percussionist for Cincinnati Symphony (center), and tenor Richard Crooks (right), pose with taxi horns from “An American in Paris” on February 28, 1929. Photo courtesy the Ira & Leonore Gershwin Trusts.   The University Symphony Orchestra at the University of Michigan will perform two George Gershwin masterpieces—”An American in Paris” (1928) and “Concerto in F” (1925)—in new critical editions that reveal, for the first time in decades, the composer’s original intent for the […]

  After George Gershwin’s death, Ira writes a letter to DuBose Heyward passing along his and George’s respect and affection for the author.  Take a look at Ira’s letter of August 2, 1937, to DuBose, held at the South Carolina Historical Society. By Frances Sobolak By the middle of 1937, just shy of two years after the premiere of Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin’s growing brain tumor, undetected at the time, was causing him severe headaches and fainting spells. On July 11, after having fallen into a coma two days before, George underwent extensive brain surgery—but the 38-year-old composer passed […]

By Sarah Sisk The startling news was emblazoned on the front page of the New York Times on Monday, July 12, 1937. George Gershwin had died that Sunday despite an emergency operation to remove a brain tumor and save the 38-year-old composer’s life. The news came as a complete shock: while he had suffered from what was deemed a “nervous breakdown” in the weeks preceding, the real source of his ailment was discovered in his final hours, and far too late. In the days and weeks to follow, obituaries cropped up in newspapers across the country, as reporters and columnists […]

Having piqued the interest of Porgy author DuBose Heyward, George and DuBose correspond to secure the operatic rights of the pending opera. Take a look at George’s May 20th, 1932, letter to DuBose provided by the South Carolina Historical Society.  By Frances Sobolak 1932 was a productive year for the Gershwins. The Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered George’s Second Rhapsody in late January, George composed Cuban Overture in June and July, and the brothers’ Of Thee I Sing became the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize. In the midst of all this, George and Porgy author DuBose Heyward were working towards […]

The Grofé orchestration of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue calls for a wide range of saxophones, including one of the smallest members of the family–the sopranino. U-M DMA saxophonist Edward Goodman played the sopranino in our 2014 test performance and came by our office to talk about it. Edward Goodman. While the day-by-day in the Gershwin office has us predominantly editing musical notes on a page, live performances—like the one that just took place with the Reno Philharmonic—are a vital part of the critical edition process. Test performances are in many ways our dress rehearsal, pulling all the parts together […]

Check out this letter from George Gershwin to Dorothy Heyward! It offers us a window into the working relationships between George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, and literary couple Dorothy and DuBose Heyward. The famous collaboration between the Gershwins and librettist DuBose Heyward resulted in the creation of one of the best known American operas, Porgy and Bess, whose production forged lasting professional and personal relationships between the three men. George, Ira, and DuBose regularly kept in touch, exchanging new lyrics, novel-to-stage adjustments, and production ideas. DuBose’s wife Dorothy Heyward, herself a playwright, was also a part of this circle and frequently […]

A photo uncovered in the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Archive sheds a revealing light on the question of what pitches composer George Gershwin intended to be used for his iconic taxi horn passages in the symphonic tone poem An American in Paris (1928). As described in an article by Michael Cooper in The New York Times as well as on NPR’s All Things Considered, the forthcoming George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition of An American in Paris suggests that the traditional realization of the iconic taxi horn parts used by orchestras today is incorrect. Rather than sounding the pitches A, […]

On February 21 and 23, the Reno Philharmonic gave a test performance of our current drafts for Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris. The response from the orchestra and the audience was fantastic, the performance a success, and our editor-in-chief Mark Clague was able to explore his suspicions about the taxi horn pitches in An American in Paris (see the New York Times article). Here, conductor Laura Jackson provides her own response to the edited scores and considers how the newly reintroduced material fared in performance. Q: Now that the concert is over–and was a huge success–what material did you find you […]