The Great American Songbook
sat 26 sep 2026 16:00 hrs
The Big Five of the 21st Century: George Gershwin (Part III)
Jacob Gershwine (New York, 1898) was one of four children born to Roza and Moishe Gershovitz, Russian Jews who emigrated to America and changed their name from Gershovitz to Gershwine. Jacob, in turn, changed his name to Gershwin and his first name to George. His brother Israel, who was older by two years, would from 1924 onwards write all the—often brilliant—lyrics for his brother’s songs as Ira Gershwin.
>>>A short biography of George Gershwin follows the playlist
Playlist
1935 – Opera Porgy and Bess
Porgy, I’s Your Woman Now / I Loves You Porgy
Roberta Gambarini – Easy to Love (2007)
Tamir Hendelman – piano; John Clayton – bass; Willie Jones III – drums
My Man’s Gone Now
Cécile McLorin Salvant – Dreams and Daggers (2017)
Sullivan Fortner – piano; Paul Sikivie – bass; Lawrence Leathers – drums
1937 – Five songs from the musical film Shall We Dance
They Can’t Take That Away from Me
Ron Carter Quartet – Brazil L.I.K.E. (2017)
Victoria Maldonado
I’ve Got Beginner’s Luck
Diane Schuur – Some Other Time (2008)
Randy Porter – piano; Dan Palmer – guitar; Scott Steed – bass; Reggie Jackson – drums
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Cheryl Bentyne – The Gershwin Songbook (2011)
Mark Winkler – vocals; Ted Howe – piano; Peter Gordon – flute; Kevin Axt – bass; Dave Tull – drums/percussion
Shall We Dance
Chris Connor – I Walk with Music (2002)
Michel Abene – piano; Jack Wilkins – guitar; Chip Jackson – bass; Dennis Mackrel – drums; Bill Easley – tenor saxophone
They All Laughed
Thomas Quasthoff – The Jazz Album (2007)
Thomas Quasthoff – vocals; Till Brönner – flugelhorn, trumpet; Axel Schlosser – trumpet; Ruud Breuls – flugelhorn, trumpet; Günter Bollmann – trombone; Richard Todd – French horn; Fiete Felsch – flute, alto saxophone; Gary Foster – alto saxophone; Andreas Maile – clarinet, tenor saxophone, flute; Marcus Bartelt – bass clarinet, baritone saxophone; Frank Chastenier – Rhodes piano; Alan Broadbent – piano, arranger; Chuck Loeb – guitar; Karl Schloz – guitar; Dieter Ilg – double bass; Peter Erskine – drums, percussion; Annemarie Moorcroft – viola; Clemens Linder – violin
1937 – Two songs from the musical film A Damsel in Distress
A Foggy Day
Dee Dee Bridgewater – Eleanora Fagan (1915–1959): To Billie with Love from Dee Dee Bridgewater
Edsel Gomez – piano; James Carter – bass clarinet; Christian McBride – bass; Lewis Nash – drums
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Melissa Stylianou – No Regrets (2014)
Bruce Barth – piano; Linda Oh – bass; Matt Wilson – drums
1937 – I Was Doing All Right
Alice Ricciardi – Comes Love (2008)
Roberto Tarenzi – piano; Neal Milner – bass; Will Terrill – drums; Gaetano Partipilo – flute; Marco Bovi – guitar
1937 – Love Is Here to Stay
Sandy Stewart – Love Is Here to Stay (2005)
Bill Charlap – piano; George Gershwin – piano
Someone to Watch Over Me
>>>Short biography on George Gershwin
George Gershwin, born Jacob Gershwine (New York, 26 September 1898 – Hollywood, 11 July 1937), was an American composer, pianist, conductor and painter.
He is widely considered to be one of America’s greatest composers. More successfully than any of his contemporaries, Gershwin brought together early 20th-century classical music, American folk traditions—including blues, spirituals and jazz—and popular entertainment music. He worked mainly with his older brother Ira, who wrote the lyrics to his music.
George’s father, Moishe Gershovitz, was a Russian Jewish immigrant who had left St. Petersburg for New York in 1890 to build a new life. Around 1894, he changed the family surname to Gershwine, with George later changing it again, adopting the name Gershwin in 1920.
The family bought a piano for Ira, George’s older brother, who was a quiet child and a keen reader—and who would go on to be George’s main lyricist. But it was George who could not stay away from the instrument and who soon learned to play all kinds of tunes on it.
At twelve, George began studying with Charles Hambitzer, the lessons proving so successful that by age 15 he had secured a position as a song plugger at New York music publisher Remick & Co. His job involved sorting through incoming ‘musical mail’, including musical submissions from composers and lyric writers hoping to have their work published. He also accompanied singers at the piano, sight-reading new compositions as they were tried out or auditioned. The position gave Gershwin valuable experience and helped him develop his improvisational skills.
He went on to study music theory, conducting, harmony, counterpoint and music history with teachers including Joseph Schillinger, Henry Cowell and Wallingford Riegger.
His first major success came in 1918 with Swanee, which became a hit through Al Jolson’s performance. The following year, Gershwin wrote Lullaby for string quartet, marking his first serious venture into concert music. By then, he was employed as a salaried composer by the Harms publishing house, and he contributed several songs to his first musical, La, La, Lucille.
Rhapsody in Blue was the first of George’s ‘classical’ works. Written in 1923 at the request of Paul Whiteman, it combined symphonic music with jazz influences. It was followed by works including Piano Concerto in F (1925), An American in Paris (1928), Second Rhapsody (1931) and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935).
Gershwin himself resisted the idea that his popular and classical music belonged in two separate worlds. He wanted to write music capable of appealing to admirers of both, bringing jazz into his classical works and drawing on classical harmonic ideas in his popular music.
Until around 1935, Broadway shows, revues and musicals were enjoying their golden age, while jazz was rapidly gaining popularity as a distinctly American music form.
It was the era of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ and the ‘Jazz Age’, and Gershwin was fascinated by jazz. He would regularly travel to Harlem to hear jazz musicians, with James P. Johnson his great piano idol. Alongside the extraordinary popularity of the (American) musical, the period offered Gershwin an ideal opportunity to fuse these influences into his own music, including scores for The George White Scandals, Oh, Kay!, Girl Crazy and Lady, Be Good!.
His jazz influences can also often be heard in his playing as a pianist. Many recordings of Gershwin survive, some originally made on wax rolls, and they show Gershwin altering his melodies and tempos and giving them a distinctly jazzier treatment.
“I would like my composition to be so energetic that I would be legally required to dispense sedatives with every score sold.”
In 1927, Gershwin travelled to Paris, where he met Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Nadia Boulanger and Sergei Prokofiev, all of whom admired his compositions. Gershwin, meanwhile, asked several of these composers whether they would teach him, but the answer was always no. Ravel famously responded, “Why become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?” When Gershwin asked Stravinsky the same question, Stravinsky asked how much he earned. Gershwin named a six-figure sum, prompting Stravinsky to reply, “Then perhaps I should study with you.”
In 1936, Gershwin moved to Beverly Hills with Ira and Ira’s wife, Leonore, to write songs for musical such as Shall We Dance and A Damsel in Distress. The brothers had lived together for most of George’s life, often in a large house George had bought and where their parents also lived. In Beverly Hills, Gershwin became neighbours with Arnold Schoenberg, becoming good friends and regularly visiting each other, playing tennis together and respecting each other’s music.
Yet Gershwin never truly felt at home in Hollywood. A born-and-bred Brooklynite, he yearned for New York from the moment he arrived.
At the start of 1937, George began suffering from headaches, and his sense of smell changed: he constantly smelled burning rubber. In February, he performed his Piano Concerto in F a Carnegie Hall but began having problems with is coordination. These problems became increasingly severe, and in July he fell into a coma. He was taken from Hollywood to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, where he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He died during surgery to remove the tumour. He was only 38.
It is extraordinary to consider the sheer volume of music Gershwin produces, as well as its consistently high quality, both in the classical and popular spheres, in a life that only lasted 38 years.
