Thoughts on the Music & Times of George Gershwin

"…true music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today.”

            George Gershwin

What can be said about the infectiousness, the smoothness, the rhythm, of George Gershwin’s music that hasn’t already been said?  Oh, one can give the bare facts: born Jacob Gershvin in 1898 in Brooklyn to an immigrant Russian Jewish family, grew up in poverty, learned to play on his brother Ira’s piano; Tin Pan Alley song plugger, creator of musicals and pop songs (most with Ira as lyricist), operas, and orchestral works; died an untimely death in Hollywood at age 39 from a brain tumor.  But those are only facts, with little flesh on their bones.  The flesh is in the music and what it reveals about American culture, and about Gershwin himself.

Gershwin occupies two spheres as a musician: the writer of entertainment music, and the writer of serious music.  And the intersection of these two spheres hasn’t always been a comfortable one.  He was a gifted melodist, had a quick ear for improvisation, loved writing show tunes, suffered from a lack of compositional training, and clearly possessed a restless and inquisitive musical spirit.  During his lifetime he enjoyed great success as a Broadway composer, but critics were often baffled by his “serious” music; they never seemed to know how to classify it.  They couldn’t label it, and often panned it.  But Americans of all stripes loved it and continue to love it, maybe because it catches and echoes back to us our own restless, driving energy, immigrant roots, and desire to have it all.

Master Chorus Eastside’s May 19 concert spans almost the entire range of Gershwin’s music: choral arrangements of early Broadway hits such as Strike Up the Band and Someone to Watch Over Me as well as more mature tunes like Love is Here to Stay and I Got Rhythm; solo renditions of The Man I Love and Somebody Loves Me; dynamic selections from Porgy and Bess such as Summertime, It Ain’t Necessarily So, and I Got Plenty of Nuthin’; and most exciting of all, a choral arrangement, with solo piano, of Rhapsody in Blue.  And just to round things off and give the perspective of Gershwin’s times, we’ve included the solos of some of his Tin Pan Alley contemporaries: Harold Arlen, Fats Waller and Irving Berlin for example, like a diamond ringed by other valuable gems.

So kick back, whether at our concert or anywhere else, and enjoy the rhythms and melodies of George Gershwin, and hear his people—us—and his times—twentieth-century America—in its music.

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside