Gershwin, anyone?

[TMadness1013]

If someone were to ask me a list of my 100 favorite jazz standards...and then analyze which composer came up most often, it would probably be George Gershwin.

While his music has been recorded by quite a few people, a great deal of it has been ignored as well. Generally, it's the same tunes that get the bulk of the attention...

I Got Rhythm, Summertime, Embracable You, etc.

I find it amazing that while his music is recorded often, that some tunes are not recorded MORE often...ex. Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, Bess - You Is My Woman Now, Someone to Watch Over Me, Swanee, etc.

I also find it interesting that more of his music isn't documented in Fake Books.

I'm wondering if a lot of his music isn't recorded/performed by instrumentalists because so much of the charm comes from the lyrics that Ira wrote. But...the music is just so great that I believe it speaks for itself.

Thoughts??

[Been-Jammin']

I LOVE Gershwin's music!
What really stands out to me is the way he bridged the gap between jazz and classical music.
Truely a revolutionary composer!
My favorites of his:
Summertime
Embracable You
American in Paris >my sax quartet played an arrangement of this - tre bien!
Rhapsody in Blue
and there are many more
They are FUN songs, which makes me love them even more!
The only drawback to his stuff, IMO, is that it's awfully repetetive, BUT, he kept it interesting with variations on the main melody on each repetition..so it's all good
Gershwin is, without a doubt, one of the best composers of the 20th century. Heck, I'd even put him up there with the greats of all time!

[GAS_Wyo]

The trio I play with loves Gershwin also. We've taken a quartet piece and made it into a trio. Tunes include

"Nice Work if you can get it" from the picture "Damsel in Distress" (1937)
"Love Walked In" from the picture "Goldwyn Follies" (1938)
"They All Laughed" from the picture "Shall We Dance" (1937), and
"Let's call the whole thing off" also from the picture "Shall We Dance" (1937)

This is a great piece that takes around 10 minutes of the set we're preparing for a summer picnic gig.

[KingHarvest22]

it's all about "someone to watch over me" and "the man i love", or "but not for me" and "somebody loves me"

[candiceartisan]

There are great jazz arrangements of Gershwin's songs in the book "Gerswin by Special Arrangement". Put out by Warner Brothers. Book can be had for alto or tenor sax and comes with playalong CD. I bought this and similar jazz books from Amazon. I practice with these books every night. I like them much better than the Aeborsold books. Much more of a challenge!
Candy

[ssleb]

I think Gershwin and the Duke are both up there in terms of coming up in set lists....with the top going to Duke.

[sopranofreak]

For all my years playing the piano, the only piece I can still sit down and just <play> is Gershwin's 'Prelude II' which I painstakingly taught myself over the course of about a year at age 12/13. It was my collection of Gershwin that kept me going through all those horrible piano lessons... He was my first musical love.

[mountainman]

Originally Posted by TMadness1013

If someone were to ask me a list of my 100 favorite jazz standards...and then analyze which composer came up most often, it would probably be George Gershwin.

While his music has been recorded by quite a few people, a great deal of it has been ignored as well. Generally, it's the same tunes that get the bulk of the attention...

I Got Rhythm, Summertime, Embracable You, etc.

I find it amazing that while his music is recorded often, that some tunes are not recorded MORE often...ex. Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, Bess - You Is My Woman Now, Someone to Watch Over Me, Swanee, etc.

I also find it interesting that more of his music isn't documented in Fake Books.

I'm wondering if a lot of his music isn't recorded/performed by instrumentalists because so much of the charm comes from the lyrics that Ira wrote. But...the music is just so great that I believe it speaks for itself.

Thoughts??

And then there's Porter, Berlin, Rogers & Hart, Lerner & Lowe. They have beautifully crafted chord changes which took days sometimes weeks to work out. Some musicians even feel they can stand on stage running scales and chords over those changes and create something " better then the original"? ! A very few succeed. They even have the gall to name those "instant compositions". It's a lot like rearraging Beethoven.

I run scales and chords for practice and thats what a lot of jazz sounds like today, practice! I have studied scales and chords in all keys and keep forgetting them in the odd keys that we never play in. Purists may frown, but I always state the melody first and then not stray too far from it. Oscar Peterson is a master at that.
"The Ultimate Broadway fake Book" has a wealth of tunes.

[Ian]

Thing that amazes me about Gershwin is that the incredible music he produced all happened in such a short lifespan :he died tragically prematurely I think in his mid to late 30's!!