Download or read book George Gershwin written by Howard Pollack and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-01-15 with total page 938 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive biography of George Gershwin (1898-1937) unravels the myths surrounding one of America's most celebrated composers and establishes the enduring value of his music. Gershwin created some of the most beloved music of the twentieth century and, along with Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter, helped make the golden age of Broadway golden. Howard Pollack draws from a wealth of sketches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, books, articles, recordings, films, and other materials—including a large cache of Gershwin scores discovered in a Warner Brothers warehouse in 1982—to create an expansive chronicle of Gershwin’s meteoric rise to fame. He also traces Gershwin’s powerful presence that, even today, extends from Broadway, jazz clubs, and film scores to symphony halls and opera houses. Pollack’s lively narrative describes Gershwin’s family, childhood, and education; his early career as a pianist; his friendships and romantic life; his relation to various musical trends; his writings on music; his working methods; and his tragic death at the age of 38. Unlike Kern, Berlin, and Porter, who mostly worked within the confines of Broadway and Hollywood, Gershwin actively sought to cross the boundaries between high and low, and wrote works that crossed over into a realm where art music, jazz, and Broadway met and merged. The author surveys Gershwin’s entire oeuvre, from his first surviving compositions to the melodies that his brother and principal collaborator, Ira Gershwin, lyricized after his death. Pollack concludes with an exploration of the performances and critical reception of Gershwin's music over the years, from his time to ours.
Download or read book George Gershwin His Life Music written by Ean Wood and published by Bobcat Books. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the summer of 1937 George Gershwin died suddenly from a brain tumour at the age of 38. His tragically early death stunned the world. A composer of classical and popular music, he had summed up the unique qualities of what is meant by ""American music"". This book sheds fresh light on the man and includes exclusive interviews with musicians who knew him, material from the Gershwin family archives and coverage of the composer's musical works in full."
Download or read book Summertime George Gershwin s Life in Music written by Richard Crawford and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Elegant and authoritative.” —Thomas Brothers, author of Help!: The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration New York City native and gifted pianist George Gershwin (1898–1937) blossomed as an accompanist before his talent as a songwriter opened the way to Broadway, where he composed a long run of musical comedies, many with his brother Ira as lyricist. But his aspirations reached beyond commercial success. Appealing to listeners on both sides of the purported popular-classical divide, his first instrumental composition, Rhapsody in Blue, was an instant classic. He pushed boundaries again a decade later with the groundbreaking folk opera, Porgy and Bess—his magnum opus. In 1936, he and Ira moved west to write songs for Hollywood, but their work was cut short when George developed a brain tumor. He died at thirty-eight, a beloved artist who had fashioned his own brand of American music. Drawing extensively from letters and contemporaneous accounts, acclaimed music historian Richard Crawford traces the arc of Gershwin’s remarkable life, seamlessly blending colorful anecdotes with a celebration of his unforgettable music-making.
Download or read book The Memory of All that written by Joan Peyser and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2006 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a startlingly fresh account of the life of one of the greatest 20th-century Americans, composer and songwriter George Gershwin. Joan Peyser examines Gershwin's character, his complex relationship with brother and collaborator Ira, and his several romantic affairs. This 2006 edition includes newly discovered information in a new author's introduction.
Download or read book The Gershwins and Me written by Michael Feinstein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Feinstein was just 20 years old when he got the chance of a lifetime: a job with his hero, Ira Gershwin. During their six-year partnership, Feinstein blossomed under Gershwin's mentorship and Gershwin was reinvigorated by the younger man's zeal. Now, in The Gershwins and Me, Michael Feinstein shares unforgettable stories and reminiscences from the music that defined American popular song, along with rare Gershwin memorabilia he's collected through the years. Includes an accompanying CD packed with Feinstein's original recordings of 12 Gershwins' songs.
Download or read book The George Gershwin Reader written by Robert Wyatt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of articles, biographical reminiscences, reviews, musical analyses, and letters relating to the life and music of George Gershwin.
Download or read book George Gershwin written by Catherine Reef and published by Morgan Reynolds Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the life of the American Jewish composer who created a new kind of music that has lasted beyond the fashion of his time.
Download or read book Rhapsody in Blue written by George Gershwin and published by Alfred Music. This book was released on 1994-11-02 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To provide greater availability for a work of such importance, the original publishers secured from Gershwin a solo piano version wherein the orchestral parts are fused together with the solo piano part (PS0047). Due to concerns that the composer's arrangement presented too many technical demands to pianists not possessing the requisite technique, a modified arrangement was delicately solicited from pianists of the time. (Gershwin's untimely death precluded any modification from the composer himself.) Many attempts at technical modifications were rejected on ethical grounds until Herman Wasserman--who taught Gershwin to play the piano--submitted a manuscript which became this edition. Several prominent pianists who reviewed the score all attested to the amazing reduction in technical demands while retaining the clarity, sonority, and brilliance of the original. This edition is designed for Early Advanced pianists, although some sections, including the well-known Moderato middle section, are accessible to those performing at less-advanced levels.
Download or read book George Gershwin His Journey to Greatness written by David Ewen and published by Frederick Ungar. This book was released on 1986 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Life and Times of George Gershwin written by Jim Whiting and published by Mitchell Lane. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Gershwin couldn't seem to stay out of trouble when he was a boy. He was a tough kid who got in a lot of fights and frequently skipped school. When his family bought a piano, his life was transformed. He quickly mastered the instrument, and then dropped out of school when he was fifteen to become a musician. Within a year, he had sold his first song. When he was 20, he wrote his first big hit. Five years after that, Rhapsody in Blue catapulted him to international fame. With his brother Ira as lyricist, George went on to compose some of the most famous musicals of the twentieth century, and he wrote several movie scores.?
Download or read book George Gershwin written by Walter Rimler and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Gershwin lived with purpose and gusto, but with melancholy as well, for he was unable to make a place for himself--no family of his own and no real home in music. He and his siblings received little love from their mother and no direction from their father. Older brother and lyricist Ira managed to create a home when he married Leonore Strunsky, a hard-edged woman who lived for wealth and status. The closest George came to domesticity was through his longtime relationship with Kay Swift. She was his lover, musical confidante, and fellow composer. But she remained married to another man while he went endlessly from woman to woman. Only in the final hours of his life, when they were separated by a continent, did he realize how much he needed her. Fatally ill, unprotected by (and perhaps estranged from) Ira, he was exiled by Leonore from the house she and the brothers shared, and he died horribly and alone at the age of thirty-eight. Nor was Gershwin able to find a satisfying musical harbor. For years his songwriting genius could be expressed only in the ephemeral world of show business, as his brilliance as a composer of large-scale works went unrecognized by highbrow music critics. When he resolved this quandary with his opera Porgy and Bess, the critics were unable to understand or validate it. Decades would pass before this, his most ambitious composition, was universally regarded as one of music's lasting treasures and before his stature as a great composer became secure. In George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait, Walter Rimler makes use of fresh sources, including newly discovered letters by Kay Swift as well as correspondence between and interviews with intimates of Ira and Leonore Gershwin. It is written with spirited prose and contains more than two dozen photographs.
Download or read book George Gershwin written by Larry Starr and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this welcome addition to the immensely popular Yale Broadway Masters series, Larry Starr focuses fresh attention on George Gershwin’s Broadway contributions and examines their centrality to the composer’s entire career. Starr presents Gershwin as a composer with a unified musical vision—a vision developed on Broadway and used as a source of strength in his well-known concert music. In turn, Gershwin’s concert-hall experience enriched and strengthened his musicals, leading eventually to his great “Broadway opera,” Porgy and Bess. Through the prism of three major shows—Lady Be Good (1924), Of Thee I Sing (1931), and Porgy and Bess (1935)—Starr highlights Gershwin’s distinctive contributions to the evolution of the Broadway musical. In addition, the author considers Gershwin’s musical language, his compositions for the concert hall, and his movie scores for Hollywood in the light of his Broadway experience.
Download or read book America I Hear You written by Barbara Mitchell and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on the life and musical career of the composer who wrote a number of popular musicals and brought jazz into the realm of acceptable and respectable music.
Download or read book Let em Eat Cake written by Susan Jedren and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-02-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the heat in Brooklyn climbs to a hundred, there's only one thing worse than being a delivery man for HomeMade Cakes. It's being a delivery woman for Homemade. Because Anna, the feisty heroine of this earthy and irreverent novel, has to put up with things that her male co-workers can't imagine, from a boss who despises women to storekeepers who feel her up when they aren't trying to rip her off for the price of a carton of Chocos. As realized by Susan Jerden, Anna is a true representative of blue-collar, no-glitz New York, a valiant single mother, whose attempts to keep her head above water—and her dignity intact—are both hilarious and uplifting. Let 'Em Eat Cake is a novel for anyone who has ever worked at a demeaning job and dreamed of dancing on the merchandise, a book as real as a corner bodega and as refreshing as an open hydrant in the middle of a scolding summer.
Download or read book An American Rhapsody written by Paul Kresh and published by Dutton Juvenile. This book was released on 1988 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of the successful composer of musical comedies, popular songs, symphonic works, and the opera "Porgy and Bess."
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Gershwin written by Anna Harwell Celenza and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-22 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how Gershwin's iconic music was shaped by American political, intellectual, cultural and business interests as well as technological advances.
Download or read book George Gershwin written by Rodney Greenberg and published by Phaidon. This book was released on 1998-04-23 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This expert biography places Gershwin's music within the context of his frenetic lifestyle to show how a teenage song-plugger became internationally renowned in a career that spanned a mere two decades. It also brings home the realization that Gershwin's tragic death aged only 38 robbed us of untold musical treasures.
