A Note From Bob
The man who taught America to sing
Thursday, and we turn to the Jazz Age. George Gershwin started out as a teenage song plugger on Tin Pan Alley, hammering out other people's tunes for a few dollars a week. Within a decade he had conquered Broadway with his brother Ira, and with Rhapsody in Blue he carried jazz straight into the concert hall. Porgy and Bess, An American in Paris, and a songbook the country still hums: he wrote it all in a life that lasted just 38 years. Today's featured quiz celebrates that extraordinary run. Pour the coffee.
Trivia Question of the Day
On a February afternoon in 1924, a 25-year-old George Gershwin sat at the piano in New York's Aeolian Hall and premiered a jazz-inspired concert piece he had written in about five weeks. It opens with a single clarinet sliding up the scale, one of the most famous openings in American music. What is the piece called?
The answer is at the bottom of this email.
Today's Featured Quiz
George Gershwin
Twenty questions on the Brooklyn kid who became America's composer. From Tin Pan Alley and the Broadway stage to Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess, and An American in Paris, Gershwin packed a century's worth of music into far too few years. See how well you know Gershwin.
The Answer
Rhapsody in Blue
Bandleader Paul Whiteman commissioned the piece for a concert he billed as "An Experiment in Modern Music," and Gershwin reportedly learned it was on the program from a newspaper item just weeks before the show. He composed at a sprint while Ferde Grofé handled the orchestration, and at the premiere on February 12, 1924, Gershwin improvised parts of the piano solo right on stage. That famous opening clarinet wail began as a rehearsal joke by Whiteman's clarinetist, Ross Gorman. Gershwin liked it so much he told him to keep it in.
On This Day
On this day in 1981, Fiddler on the Roof returned to Broadway at Lincoln Center's New York State Theater, with Herschel Bernardi as Tevye and Jerome Robbins's original staging intact. Seventeen years after the show first opened, audiences still rose for "Tradition." It is exactly the kind of show you'll find in today's companion quiz: thirty questions on the most iconic musicals ever to light up Broadway.
Stay
Curious.
Bob
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