Composed: 1934–35 Premiered: 1935, New York Libretto by DuBose Heyward after his novel Porgy, with lyrics by Heyward and Ira Gershwin Act I During a crap game in Catfish Row, Charleston, Clara sings a lullaby to her baby. Porgy, a cripple, returns home in his goat cart. Crown, high on ‘happy dust’ provided by ...
Keyboard percussion instruments include the western xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, the log xylophones and marimbas of Africa and Central America, and the barred instruments played in the Indonesian gamelan. The orchestral xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel have thin wooden or metal rectangular bars laid out like a chromatic piano keyboard. The back row of bars – ...
b. 1926, American Born in South Carolina, writing and producing operas while on the faculty of Florida State University during the early 1950s – the locally popular Slow Dusk (1949) and The Fugitives (1951), which disappeared after its first performance – Floyd created the work that became his calling card. Written in seven months and presented at the university ...
1898–1937 American composer As a teenager, Gershwin played the latest hit songs to potential customers in a sheet-music store, and by the age of 21 (with his ‘Swanee’, made popular by Al Jolson) he had become a successful songwriter himself. After a visit to Europe, when he heard the latest musical shows and operettas that London, Berlin ...
1898–1937, American On the night of 12 February 1924, Gershwin became an instant sensation when performing his Rhapsody in Blue at New York’s Aeolian Hall. Written in less than a month and advertised as ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’, Rhapsody melded Classical structures with jazz, ragtime and the blues, heralding a new era in American music. While ...
(Piano, composer, 1898–1937) One of the most enduringly popular composers of the twentieth century, Gershwin composed such enduring melodies as ‘Summertime’, ‘Embraceable You’ and ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’. His tuneful songs with their rich harmonic progressions are ideal for improvisation and were popular with jazz musicians including Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, ...
(Arranger, composer, piano, 1912–88) Gil Evans (born Ian Green) achieved fame through his work with Miles Davis on the seminal recordings Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy And Bess (1959) and Sketches Of Spain (1960). His own output was relatively small, but his influence was much larger. His greatest gift lay in arranging – or more accurately, re-composing ...
b. 1927, American From the Mississippi to the concert stages of Europe, Price helped to pave the way for black American singers. Assisted by Paul Robeson and an affluent white family in her hometown, she gained entry to Juilliard, where she appeared in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts. When ...
The history of post-war jazz tracked the musical development of Miles Dewey Davis III so closely that it is tempting to see the trumpeter as the orchestrator of each of the most significant stylistic shifts of the era. With the notable exception of free jazz, Miles seemed to trigger a new seismic shift in the music with each passing decade. ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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