George Gershwin
George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1898, the second son of Russian immigrants. In 1914, he left high school to work as a Tin Pan Alley song plugger.
His first real fame came with Swanee (lyrics by Irving Caesar), which was turned into a smash hit by Al Jolson in 1919.
In 1924, George teamed up with his older brother Ira, and the pair became the dominant Broadway songwriters, creating infectious rhythm numbers and poignant ballads. This extraordinary creative combination created a succession of musical comedies, including Lady, Be Good! (1924), Oh, Kay! (1926), Funny Face (1927), Strike up the Band (1927 and 1930), Girl Crazy (1930), and Of Thee I Sing (1931), which was the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize. Over the years, Gershwin songs have also been used in numerous films, including Shall We Dance (1937), A Damsel in Distress (1937), and An American in Paris (1951).
George always held ambitions to compose serious music. Paul Whiteman asked him to write an original work for a concert of modern music to be presented at in New York in 1924: Rhapsody In Blue opened a new era in American music. Commissioned by conductor Walter Damrosch to compose a piano concerto for the New York Symphony Society in 1925, George wrote Concerto In F, considered by many to be his finest orchestral work.
In 1926, George read Porgy, DuBose Heyward’s novel of the South Carolina Gullah culture, and immediately saw it as a perfect vehicle for a folk-opera using blues and jazz idioms. Porgy and Bess (co-written with Heyward and Ira) was George’s most ambitious undertaking. After a Boston preview, Porgy and Bess opened its Broadway run on October 10, 1935. The opera has since had numerous major revivals, toured the world and was made into a major motion picture in 1959.
George Gershwin was working in Hollywood at the height of his career when he died of a brain tumor at not quite 39 years old. His works are performed today with greater frequency than they were during his brief lifetime; and he was awarded a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1998, the centennial of his birth.
