“Life is a lot like jazz. It’s best when you improvise.”
George Gershwin
So I was looking for an excuse to show some pictures of the recent multi-media project I worked on that debuted Saturday night and I landed on Gershwin. The concert called “Kelley’s Blues” featured the artwork of Gary Kelley and the music of Duke Ellington and George Gershwin performed by the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony (and guest pianist Genadi Zagor) under the direction of Jason Weinberger.
As a composer Gershwin is perhaps best known for his Rhapsody in Blue, though much of his music has had a long life in Hollywood, beginning with a forgotten film called Delicious in 1931 to his music being used in an episode of The Simpsons in 2010. IMDB has Gershwin’s music being credited (or at least used if not credited) in more than 300 films and TV shows. Among the list are An American in Paris, Porgy and Bess, and Manhattan.
When Rhapsody in Blue was used in The King of Jazz (1930) he was paid $50,000. It’s well-known that at one time in the 1930s that baseball great Babe Ruth made more than President Hoover, but writer Walter Rimler (George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait) has said that Gershwin made more than both of them combined. Gershwin’s loan Oscar nomination came in 1938 for the lyrics he wrote (with his brother, Ira) for the song They Can’t take that Away from Me used in the 1937 film Shall We Dance.
Outside of Hollywood he had his first hit in 1919 with the song Swanee, and La, La, Lucille was his first Broadway play. In 1932 he won the Pulitzer Prize for the musical Of Theee I Sing (on collaboration with George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin.) He had quite a run, especally when you consider he was only 38-years-old when he died.
Here are some photos I took of the artwork being created and at the rehearsal last Saturday.
Photos Copyright 2010 Scott W. Smith