[Dixielandjazz] Celebrating George Gershwin in Songs and Stories - Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2016

[Robert Ringwald]

George Gershwin  
    Celebrating George Gershwin in Songs and Stories
by Howard Reich
Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2016


What is it about George Gershwin's music that makes it sound so fresh and vital nearly 80 years after his death, in 1937?


Is it the Jazz Age rhythms, which convey irresistibly brash energy? The poetry of his melodies, which merge blue-note expressivity with the flavor of Yiddish culture? The pungent complexity of his harmonies, which sound like no one else's?


Surely it's all of that, and more, these elements and others converging in landmark works such as the opera "Porgy and Bess," the tone poem "An American in Paris," the jazz-meets-classical experiment "Rhapsody in Blue," the piano showpiece Concerto in F and, of course, indelible songs such as "I Got Rhythm," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "The Man I Love" and dozens of other American standards.


To some, though, Gershwin's music stands as more than just great art to be admired at every hearing. To them, Gershwin's oeuvre becomes a driving force for a life in music, as in the case of pianist Richard Glazier, who will present his multimedia show "Rhapsody and Rhythm: The Gershwin Experience" Saturday night at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park.


"When I was 9 years old, I saw the film 'Girl Crazy' with Mickey and Judy," says Glazier, referring, of course, to Rooney and Garland and an event that changed Glazier's life.


"That was the first time I heard Gershwin's music. I heard the big band sound of Tommy Dorsey -- I guess I was an old soul even as a 9-year-old."


Knocked out by the music, Glazier -- with the help of an aunt -- began digging deeply into Gershwin's music and era, the two eventually deciding to send a letter to the master's surviving brother and songwriting partner, lyricist Ira Gershwin.


"Dear Mr. Gershwin," the note began. "May I please have a picture of George to hang on my wall?"


Four months later the photo arrived, and two years after that young Glazier traveled from his home in Indianapolis to Beverly Hills to meet Ira Gershwin. In the decades that followed, Glazier has positioned himself as a connoisseur of music by Gershwin and his contemporaries, expressing his expertise at the piano, on TV specials, recordings and every other outlet he can find.


So all these years later, why does he think Gershwin's music exerted such a pull on him?


"It's like what Leonard Bernstein said," explains Glazier. "When you listen to music of a genius -- whether it's Schubert or Chopin or Schumann or Gershwin -- you hear two or three bars, and you know it in the dark. It can't be anyone else. It's got their unique stamp on it. It touches something inside of us."


In Gershwin's case, Glazier believes the composer in his youth "heard the Yiddish theater, heard music in Harlem (and) fused it together to create this unique and American art form. Harold Arlen and Harry Warren and Cole Porter and Irving Berlin -- all these great composers, they all looked up to Gershwin.


"And why did they look up to Gershwin? He was able to do what those guys never would be able to do: take popular idioms and its voices and put it in the concert hall successfully. They tried to do it, but they were not as successful. They adored him for that."


Indeed, though all the songwriters Glazier cites can be considered Gershwin peers, none composed a concert work approaching the ambition or depth of "Porgy and Bess," which premiered in 1935 (though Jerome Kern's "Show Boat" of 1927 surely paved the way for Gershwin's magnum opus).


Nor did any play the piano nearly so brilliantly as Gershwin, whose nervous energy and aggressive manner are built into scores such as the "Rhapsody in Blue" and the Concerto in F. Listen to Gershwin's recordings or watch rare film clips of him playing, and you'll encounter a pianist who's always in a rush, commands a keyboard technique that allows breakneck tempos and stays as far away from sentimentality as imaginable.


Perhaps Gershwin contemporary Abram Chasins said it best when he observed, "The things that made him so special to me were his confidence, force and love for music; his incredible ease, joyous spontaneity and originality at the piano. He was the only pianist I ever heard who could make a piano laugh, really laugh."


No one in Gershwin's time, or immediately after, captured that spirit nearly as well as pianist Oscar Levant. Today, Kevin Cole stands as the pre-eminent interpreter of Gershwin's works at the piano, revivifying Gershwin's crisp-and-crackling style better than anyone.


"I see Gershwin through my eyes," says Glazier, who takes a rather different approach.


"I'm a trained classical concert pianist.... I interpret it in a romantic way. I'll never claim to be the definitive Gershwin pianist. I will never claim to replicate his style. I never claim any of that.


"I just have the way that I feel about it, and I feel it to be very romantic.... I would rather play lyrically than virtuosically."


How convincing Glazier will be with that approach remains to be heard, but his knowledge of the subject is beyond question, and he'll share that during "The Gershwin Experience" in the form of historical stories, rare video clips and musical collaborations with vocalists Michael Andrew and Michelle Knight and a trio.


Gershwin's story, of course, ends in tragedy, the genius dead at age 38 of a brain tumor. It's impossible to gauge or comprehend how much music was lost with this disastrous ending, but considering that Gershwin had built to a creative high point with "Porgy," he easily might have gone on to achieve still greater feats.


"He was getting better and better as a serious composer," says Glazier. "He wanted to be mentioned in the same breath as a Prokofiev or Ravel."


For many of us, he already is.


Richard Glazier's "Rhapsody and Rhythm: The Gershwin Experience," will play at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at the Ravinia Festival's Martin Theatre, near Lake Cook and Green Bay roads, Highland Park; $50 reserved; $10 lawn; 847-266-5100 or  http://www.ravinia.org -30/-


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