On 30 September 1935, the Colonial Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, hosted the world premiere performance of Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. It was the try-out run for the first Broadway showing at Alvin Theatre in New York City on

George Gershwin’s Song-Book George Gershwin, born on 26 September 1898, developed a distinctive musical style that combined classical, jazz, and popular music in a ground-breaking fusion unique to American music. Renowned for his remarkable dexterity as a songwriter, he literally

Escaping his hectic work schedule in 1932, George Gershwin visited Havana, the capital city of Cuba. At that time, Cuba was a highly popular tropical retreat for wealthy Americans, “as well as a convenient place to consume liquor during the

We all know George Gershwin (1898–1937) and his Rhapsody in Blue, his 1924 composition that, beginning with an extended clarinet glissando, firmly issued jazz into the world of classical music. The work was commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman and received

George Gershwin thought of himself as “a modern romantic” but more than any other American composer of the period “his impact on the American musical scene is of social as well as musical significance.” The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, born

In 1936, George Gershwin told a friend, “I am thirty-eight, famous, and rich, but profoundly unhappy. Why?” Gershwin had been experiencing severe headaches, but many of his friends simply attributed his unhappiness to his working conditions in Hollywood, “or to

The son of poor Jewish immigrants, George Gershwin (1898-1937), could hardly have dreamt that his Rhapsody in Blue would single-handedly propel him to world fame. The work was originally titled “American Rhapsody,” but when his brother Ira saw a painting