“This Critical Edition project is the greatest thing to happen to George Gershwin’s music since he wrote it! At last we can correct the hundreds of published mistakes, eradicate the questionable editorial license taken with those publications, and help to improve the quality of future performances. Joining the critical editions of all the greatest composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Verdi, American’s most popular composer finally gets his due.”
—Andrew Litton
Music Director Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Advisory Board Member, George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition
The musical legacy of George and Ira Gershwin traces the pulse of twentieth-century American life as an era of cultural, technical, and social transformation. Ira’s lyrics offer insights into American life and love with charm, eloquence, and wit. George’s aesthetic gift was to see music as neither a European inheritance nor a popular entertainment, but both at once. George Gershwin’s compositional philosophy refused to observe the polite boundaries that divided jazz from classical and Broadway from the concert hall. As a result his music offers prophetic statements in sound that have influenced subsequent generations of American composers to find inspiration in combining the unexpected and using art to cross cultural divides.
Audio Playlist
- Rhapsody in Blue
- Rhapsody in Maize & Blue
- Catfish Row Symphonic Suite
- A Flash of Gershwin
- Summertime
Performance credits
Rhapsody in Blue, U-M Symphony Band led by Michael Haithcock, Louis Nagel (piano)
Rhapsody in Maize & Blue, arranged Michael Schacter
Catfish Row Symphony Suite, U-M Symphony Band with Michael Haithcock
A Flash of Gershwin, arranged and performed by Gil Chapman
Summertime, 1961 U-M Symphony Band Russian Tour, led by W. D. Revelli, Donald Sinta (saxophone
Videos
Video Playlist
- Porgy and Bess: A Symposium (2018)
- Gershwin on George’s Piano (2015)
- Gershwin Piano Dedication (2013)
- The Gershwin Initiative Symposium (2013)
- Extended Interview with Saxophonist Timothy McAllister (2017)
- Other Interviews, Panels, and Lectures