Ferde Grof News Today

The Everly Brothers scored their third and final No. 1 hit in the U.S. with "Cathy's Clown" on May 23, 1960.

Celebrating 100 years of Gershwin’s groundbreaking classical-jazz masterpiece, Rhapsody in Blue

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THURSDAY

With his highly original melodic gift, Gershwin blended jazz and classical elements to create the iconic and enduring Rhapsody in Blue.

The champion of the great American songbook reveals how Gershwin’s brother, Ira, shaped a musical masterpiece.

George Gershwin’s work has remained popular, but it is also controversial: for some it introduced jazz into the concert hall, while others consider it to be a white musician’s crass and racist appropriation

At the turn of 1924, all of musical New York was agog at the prospect of an “Experiment in Modern Music”. The venue was the exceedingly plush Aeolian Hall, and the famous Paul Whiteman Band was performing. It wasn’t quite the first experiment in combining jazz and classical music – Whiteman had recently caused a stir by mingling songs from modernist composers such as Schoenberg, Milhaud and Bartok with jazz songs by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and Gershwin.

We must give up on authenticity and encourage pianists and conductors to play fast and loose with the score, the way they used to

This month marks the 100th anniversary of a landmark piece that brought jazz and classical music lovers together.