Jazz Articles about George Gershwin

Greg Diaz & The Art of Imagination Jazz Orchestra: Begin the Agora

by Jack Bowers
October 17, 2018

At a time when many contemporary big bands are eager to brush aside the past and “break new ground," it's always a pleasure to welcome an ensemble that honors and espouses jazz tradition with no appreciable loss of savoir-faire or, well, imagination. Begin the Agora, the debut recording by saxophonist Greg Diaz's Florida-based Art of Imagination Orchestra, embraces a customary point of view that in no way encumbers the leader's resourceful compositions (three) and arrangements (all). In other words, this ...

"Nice Work If You Can Get It" by George and Ira Gershwin

by Tish Oney
April 24, 2017

George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin represent a quintessential songwriting team laying claim to several early masterpieces included in what we now call the Great American Songbook. Representing the epitome of the “Jazz Age," they worked together from 1924-1937, creating no fewer than twenty-five full musical scores for performance in Hollywood and on the Great White Way. One of their many undisputed standards, “Nice Work If You Can Get It," beautifully balances clever lyrics with an interesting interplay of melodic and ...

George Gershwin: Gershwin Performs Gershwin: Of Rhythm and Constipation

by Marc Davis
June 11, 2014

Insert your favorite toilet joke here.I tried. I considered dozens of poop puns, then finally decided nothing could top reality. So here it is:In the 1930s, George Gershwin--already a huge star--hosted a radio show on which he played piano between laxative commercials.It's funny, really, when you hear it. And yet it doesn't detract from the music, which is sensational. Actually, the Feen-A-Mint ads are kind of charming.You can hear it yourself on ...

Porgy and Bess Broadway Production at Academy of Music

by Victor L. Schermer
February 26, 2014

Porgy and Bess Broadway Musical Production The Academy of Music Philadelphia, PA February 18, 2014 Following its multi-Tony Award-winning run on Broadway, an electrifying stage revival of George and Ira Gershwin's Porgy and Bess came to Philadelphia as part of an original cast national tour. For jazz aficionados, this timeless masterpiece, which debuted in Boston in 1935, is a quintessential opera in the jazz idiom, the purest and most potent illustration of why jazz ...

The House That George Built

by David Rickert
May 27, 2009

The House That George Built Wilfred Sheed Paperback; 368 pages ISBN: 0812970187 Random House 2008

Why were so many more good songs written during the first half of the twentieth century than the second half? Wilfred Sheed, who believes this to be the case, presents two theories in The House That George Built. One is that there were many more pianos in households during the 1920s and 1930s than there ...