April Music Minute

George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York. He taught himself to play the piano at a friend's house by following how the keys moved on a player piano. When the Gershwins finally got their own piano, George surprised everyone by sitting down and playing the songs he had learned by himself. 

George liked to compose both classical and popular music, and found a unique way to combine the two. He composed his most famous work, Rhapsody in Blue, in 1924, the same year he also had a hit show on Broadway. Gershwin also wrote the opera Porgy and Bess. He is considered one of the greatest American composers.

Rhapsody in Blue was written by Gershwin while on a train journey to Boston. 

“It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise…And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end.  No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole.  I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.” George Gershwin.

Enjoy an arrangement of  "Rhapsody in Blue" played by Vestard Shimkus.  (Parents, this is a You Tube video.  Please be advised that it may have a commercial prior to the video.  Please watch along with your children.)