Nicholas Shaneyfelt This Saturday (4/9) at 5:30PM, Nicholas Shaneyfelt will be presenting a concert of American songs on the Gershwin Steinway in the Britton Recital Hall of the U-M Moore Music Building. Nicholas devised his concert to feature composers who are less often performed but vital to the collection of American song. They include the pioneers of the genre: Edward MacDowell, Charles Griffes, and Arthur Farwell; African American composers like Robert Owens and Leslie Adams; composers who pushed the genre forward in the 60s and 70s, like Dominick Argento and Lee Hoiby; and voices of today, including Jake Heggie, Ben […]

The South Carolina Historical Society holds letters of correspondence between George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward that detail their the process of creating Porgy and Bess.  In this letter, George Gershwin writes to DuBose Heyward in March of 1932 to discuss a possible folk opera collaboration. Frances Sobolak is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan pursuing a Linguistics major and Music minor. She joined the Gershwin Initiative team in the fall of her sophomore year through the university’s undergraduate research opportunity program.   In 1926, George Gershwin was busy with musical rehearsals for the upcoming premiere of Oh, Kay!—so busy, in fact, that […]

Editor-in-Chief Mark Clague was published in Senza Sordino yesterday, the official publication of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM). His essay is an engaging write-up on the Gershwin Critical Edition, its genesis, its goals, and its current projects. Congrats, Mark!  

The Grofé orchestration of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue calls for a wide range of saxophones, including one of the smallest members of the family–the sopranino. U-M DMA saxophonist Edward Goodman played the sopranino in our 2014 test performance and came by our office to talk about it. Edward Goodman. While the day-by-day in the Gershwin office has us predominantly editing musical notes on a page, live performances—like the one that just took place with the Reno Philharmonic—are a vital part of the critical edition process. Test performances are in many ways our dress rehearsal, pulling all the parts together […]

Check out this letter from George Gershwin to Dorothy Heyward! It offers us a window into the working relationships between George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, and literary couple Dorothy and DuBose Heyward. The famous collaboration between the Gershwins and librettist DuBose Heyward resulted in the creation of one of the best known American operas, Porgy and Bess, whose production forged lasting professional and personal relationships between the three men. George, Ira, and DuBose regularly kept in touch, exchanging new lyrics, novel-to-stage adjustments, and production ideas. DuBose’s wife Dorothy Heyward, herself a playwright, was also a part of this circle and frequently […]

On February 21 and 23, the Reno Philharmonic gave a test performance of our current drafts for Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris. The response from the orchestra and the audience was fantastic, the performance a success, and our editor-in-chief Mark Clague was able to explore his suspicions about the taxi horn pitches in An American in Paris (see the New York Times article). Here, conductor Laura Jackson provides her own response to the edited scores and considers how the newly reintroduced material fared in performance. Q: Now that the concert is over–and was a huge success–what material did you find you […]

The South Carolina Historical Society holds letters of correspondence between George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward that detail their the process of creating Porgy and Bess. Take a look at the first of our series of posts on this group of sources.  Frances Sobolak is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan pursuing a Linguistics major and Music minor. She joined The Gershwin Initiative team in the fall of her sophomore year through the university’s undergraduate research opportunity program. George Gershwin and the author of the novel Porgy, DuBose Heyward, kept in regular touch via mail about their developing project. Their […]

This coming Sunday and Tuesday (Feb. 21 & 23), the Reno Philharmonic will be performing the Gershwin Initiative’s new, critically-edited versions of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue. We sat down with Laura Jackson, music director and conductor of the Reno Phil, to talk about her experiences with Gershwin, our new editions, and her upcoming concerts. Q: Hello, Laura, and thank you for spending a little time with us.  To get right to it: What are some of the things that excite you the most about your upcoming performances of Rhapsody in Blue and An American […]

We’ve reached an exciting point in our work towards the critical editions of Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris here at the Gershwin Initiative. On February 21st, the Reno Philharmonic and the Donald Sinta Quartet will be performing our current drafts of each work’s critical edition.  This test performance is key to the process of the critical edition, putting the music in the hands of live musicians who help to check and shape our work.  Also on the program are Bolcom’s Concerto Grosso for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra, and Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. All of […]

When Blue Was New: Rhapsody in Blue‘s Premiere at “An Experiment in Modern Music” In the Roaring Twenties, American bandleader Paul Whiteman embarked on an audacious mission: to organize a classical concert of all-jazz repertoire. To do this, he commissioned a piece from a young George Gershwin, leading to the creation of one of America’s most famous musical compositions. ~Sarah Sisk is an undergraduate English major at U-M’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts. She is working with the Gershwin Initiative as an undergraduate research assistant in the university’s UROP program. In the early 1920s, ragtime was out and […]