Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis presents Our Love is Here To Stay: The George Gershwin Songbook on January 28-30, 2016 at 8pm in Rose Theater, located in Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th Street, New York. Trombonist Chris Crenshaw and multireedist Victor Goines serves as music directors, leading their fellow JLCO members as they debut new jazz arrangements of music by one of America’s greatest composers.
A true giant of American song, Gershwin’s music is celebrated by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in a program that highlights Gershwin’s perpetual influence on American music. While Gershwin composed over 800 songs and musical works from 1916 until his death in 1937, for these concerts the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will offer a contemporary feast of his jazz-influenced pieces, including many of Gershwin’s most iconic songs.
Born in Brooklyn in 1898, Gershwin began his musical career as song demonstrator on Tin Pan Alley, but soon began writing his own pieces. In 1919, he had his first big success when he composed “Swanee” with Irving Ceaser, which sold more than a million copies. In 1924, composed what is perhaps his best-known work, “Rhapsody in Blue” after the prominent bandleader Paul Whiteman asked him to write an original “jazz” work for a concert. For piano and jazz band, “Rhapsody in Blue” was Gershwin’s debut in the concert hall as pianist and composer, and marked the first time that jazz rhythms and blues-influenced melodies were used successfully within a classical framework. Gershwin spent two years on his last major work, the opera “Porgy and Bess” (1935), based on a novel by DuBose Heyward about a ghetto in Charleston, South Carolina.
Gershwin’s best songs have proved to be some of the most durable of his era, and his fondness for jazz and blues music is responsible in part for the rhythmic energy and lyricism of his works. Moreover, Gershwin’s uniquely American music is recognized and embraced the world over. Though he died in 1937 at the age of 38 of a brain tumor, he remains today one of America’s most beloved popular musicians and composers, and it is in this spirit that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis celebrates his music.
Tickets for Our Love is Here to Stay: The George Gershwin Songbook can be purchased throughjazz.org24 hours a day or via CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 10am to 9pm. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60thStreet, ground floor. Box Office hours: Monday-Saturday from 10am to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain) and Sunday from noon to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain). Hot Seats, $10 seats for select shows in Rose Theater and are available for purchase to the general public on the Wednesday prior to each performance. Subject to availability. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Hot Seats Ticket Discount Program is supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Themed ‘Jazz and American Song’, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 28th season celebrates the music of the stage and silver screen and uplifts jazz’s emerging voices through an impressive array of more than 80 concerts and programs, anchored by the exceptional Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. These concerts will also stream live in high-definition audio and video for free to a global audience via jazz.org/live. Click here for the complete season schedule.
Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly acknowledges its major corporate partners:
Amtrak, Bloomberg, Brooks Brothers, The Coca-Cola Company, Con Edison, Entergy, HSBC Premier, The Shops at Columbus Circle at Time Warner Center, and SiriusXM.
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Please visit jazz.org for more information.