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Category Archives: Ryan Bañagale

Gershwin Centennial—100th Anniversary “Rhapsody in Blue” Edition Now Available

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin’s iconic concerto fusing classical music and jazz, The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition at the Univeristy of Michigan has published musicologist Ryan Raul Bañagale‘s landmark scholarly edition of the original 1924 jazz band version of Rhapsody in Blue, orchestrated by Ferde Grofé. The publication now makes the work’s full original musical notation—as it likely sounded when it was first premiered—available to Gershwin fans, music students, scholars, and performers. A signal voice in the American musical imagination, the melodies of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue were first heard on February 12, 1924 […]

Testing Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris – Laura Jackson

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 […]

New Sounds in Rhapsody and An American in Paris

Reno, NV—As editor-in-chief of the Gershwin Critical Edition, I’ve been in Reno this week with fellow editorial board member Ryan Bañagale (Colorado College), working with advisory board member Laura Jackson and her orchestra (the Reno Philharmonic) to test drive our new draft editions of An American in Paris (1928/29) and Rhapsody in Blue (1924, original Whiteman jazz arrangement). We’ve also joined forces with the Donald Sinta Quartet, who are featured as soloists in William Bolcom’s Concerto Grosso for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra, but who also join the Philharmonic to perform the additional saxophone parts required by the new Gershwin editions. […]