Happy Birthday George!

September 26^th is George Gershwin’s 120^th birthday.

Gershwin managed the divide between popular and classical music better than anyone else; writing his first hit song ‘Swanee’ in 1919 and ‘An American in Paris’ in 1928, at the age of 30. With his brother Ira’s witty lyrics, Gershwin wrote hit songs for stage and screen and his American opera ‘Porgy and Bess’ went on to become one of the most important American works of the 20^th century. Gershwin died at the young age of 38; imagine the body of work he would have created if we didn’t lose him so early.

Big fans of the composer from Brooklyn, Piano À Deux – Robert and Linda Ang Stoodley – have assembled an album of collage excerpts from Gershwin’s ‘rhapsodic ballet’, solo piano pieces, and have written new transcriptions of his songs for four hands at one piano. Watch as the duo record Linda’s arrangement of Gershwin’s Prelude No. 3 and ‘The Man I Love’. The new album will be released early next year.

Want some Gershwin right now? Here are a couple of albums to check out:
Gershwin & Ravel: Music for Piano Duo – Goldstone & Clemmow
Finnissy: Gershwin Arrangements – Ian Pace

And find other Gershwin pieces, such as ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and ‘An American in Paris’ (the composer’s original piano duet versions) here.