Click on image to buy from Amazon.ComIn this welcome addition to the immensely popular Yale Broadway Masters series, Larry Starr focuses fresh attention on George Gershwin’s Broadway contributions and examines their centrality to the composer’s entire career. Starr presents Gershwin as a composer with a unified musical vision—a vision developed on Broadway and used as a source of strength in his well-known concert music. In turn, Gershwin’s concert-hall experience enriched and strengthened his musicals, leading eventually to his great “Broadway opera,” Porgy and Bess.
Through the prism of three major shows—Lady Be Good (1924), Of Thee I Sing (1931), and Porgy and Bess (1935)—Starr highlights Gershwin’s distinctive contributions to the evolution of the Broadway musical. In addition, the author considers Gershwin’s musical language, his compositions for the concert hall, and his movie scores for Hollywood in the light of his Broadway experience. (Source: Amazon.Com)
“An admirable effort to understand the key shows in Gershwin”s career and how the productions shaped him as a composer.”–Eric Felten, The Wall Street Journal
The Washington Post Book World – February 20, 2011 (Excerpt)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that George Gershwin (1898-1937) wrote some irresistible melodies. After that, the debate begins.
Was Gershwin an inspired tunesmith, pure and simple, who nevertheless remained a rank amateur when he attempted to compose in larger forms, such as in his piano concertos or for the opera house? Or did his early death rob us of a distinctly American master, somebody who might have yoked all the strains that made up our wondrously polyglot musical culture of the mid-20th century – jazz, blues, popular song, European classical stylings, modernist experimentation – into a sustained and unified expression?
Larry Starr’s valuable new book, titled simply “George Gershwin,” makes a strong case for the latter view. This is not a traditional biography (although Starr shares some potent biographical vignettes in a section called “Snapshots”) but rather an insightful, technically intricate yet easy-to-follow study of Gershwin’s music, particularly as it came out of the Broadway tradition. For, whatever else he was or might have become, Gershwin was a creature of American musical theater: He wrote the music for 19 complete shows on Broadway or on film and concluded his career with the opera “Porgy and Bess.” [Read the full article...]
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A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll
Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]
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