[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. 100 years ago today on February 12th, 1924, this was played in public for the very first time.

[MUSIC - George Gershwin: Rhapsody In Blue]

Alison Stewart: At the premier performance of Rhapsody In Blue, the composer, George Gershwin, sat at the piano to play the piece which he had reportedly only begun writing about a month beforehand. It debuted as part of an evening title and experiment in modern music meant to showcase the latest developments in jazz within one of New York's venerated concert halls, the Aeolian. Today, Rhapsody In Blue is a staple of the American musical canon, an early fusion of jazz and classical that has inspired countless composers as you heard in our last segment with Béla Fleck.

Joining me now to get into the piece's history and legacy are three more musicians who have found ways to find meaning in the piece. Brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen are the artistic directors of the orchestral collective, the Knights. They've launched a multi-year series called The Rhapsody Project, celebrating Gershwin's composition and exploring the Rhapsody. The next event for them will be at Carnegie Hall on February 29. Colin and Eric, welcome.

Colin Jacobsen: Thank you.

Eric Jacobsen: How are you? Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: Our pal, Lara Downes, is a pianist and musical activist. She recently released Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined, a new arrangement by the Puerto Rican composer, Edmar Colón. Lara is also one of our judges for the Public Song Project, so we're extra excited to have her on today as we launch the second edition focused on the 1920s. Lara, welcome back.

Lara Downes: Hi, Alison. Good to be here.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, tell us about your relationship with Rhapsody in Blue. What does listening to it conjure for you? Have you played it? If you do, do you have a favorite recording? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. 212-433-9692. Do you have a favorite recording of Rhapsody in Blue? Maybe you play it. What does that feel like? What does listening to it conjure for you? 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and join this conversation on air. You can always text us at that number as well. Eric, I'll start with you. What is your favorite moment or section from Rhapsody in Blue?

Eric Jacobsen: Oh, it's such a good question because like the music of Gershwin, so often, you can't help but walking away whistling one of his tunes and feeling emotionally satisfied and overwhelmed by the joy of what he has created. I would say from performing the work a bunch in the last couple of years and maybe in the last 10 years, there's that epic moment after Gershwin has got our virtuosic pianist flying all over the keyboard, playing every note on the instrument so many times. The orchestra gets these wonderful licks. There's cadenzas. It's everything that it's supposed to be, and you get in about 15 minutes, and there's that moment.

The piano leaves us with these questioning chords, chords of wonder, chords of what's next, and all of a sudden comes in the strings and just a little triangle, and then horn with the love melody. It's just about as beautiful a moment in history. It's like the gymnast who raises her arm, and then puts it down and attempts this wild feat, but because of the virtuosity, it feels completely natural and without any athleticism. I think it's just love incarnate.

Alison Stewart: Lara, is that also your favorite?

Lara Downes: Yes, I know, fair, it is. It feels so funny to say that because I think everybody loves that part, but I love it because Gershwin goes to this place of intimacy. I think the Rhapsody is so forward-looking, that's his main objective, but with that theme, he's also looking back. The other part of his history as a pianist, as a classical composer, his love affair with the 19th century, with Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky, and everybody else, and it just, for me, illustrates the long line, the lineage that connects everybody.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to that portion, the love theme. This is a version of Rhapsody in Blue recorded by The Knights. Let's take a listen.

[MUSIC - The Knights: Rhapsody In Blue]

Alison Stewart: Colin, let me bring you into the conversation. When we talk about the Rhapsody, what is exactly a Rhapsody and how is it important in understanding this piece?

Colin Jacobsen: It's great. Just quickly, I was just thinking Rachmaninoff after Lara said that was supposedly in the audience at that premiere, and I would love to imagine his face when that theme came in with a tip of the hat to him. Rhapsody, well, the great thing is there's really a music definition, which is an episodic yet integrated free-flowing piece and structure, very improvisatory often with virtuosic playing, but I love that it comes from an ancient Greek word. Several definitions there, songs stitched together or an ecstatic expression of feeling, and apparently, a rhapsode, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, was an itinerant bard going around reciting and singing Homeric epic.

I think that really speaks to what Gershwin was trying to do with that piece, which was stitch together many songs of America in that piece, and part of why it has this lasting legacy.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Barbara calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Barbara. Thanks for calling All Of It as we talk about Rhapsody in Blue.

Barbara: Hi. It's great to be with you. I listen to you every day.

Alison Stewart: Thanks.

Barbara: My edition of Rhapsody in Blue I inherited from my dad. It would've been my dad's 100th birthday last year. He left me his Oscar Levant recording of Rhapsody in Blue, and I still enjoy it. It's multiple, multiple, multiple 78s. Yes, in every case, you can always hear the pianist's hand, but it's just a treat, and I listened to that along with his Ella Fitzgerald records.

Alison Stewart: Barbara, thank you so much for calling in. We had Sean Hayes on the show recently to talk about his role as Oscar Levant in Good Night, Oscar on Broadway. Levant, of course, a pianist who starred in the 1945 biographical film about George Gershwin called Rhapsody in Blue, and as part of Good Night, Oscar, Hayes himself plays a version of Rhapsody on stage every night. I want to play a clip of him talking about that experience on our show.

Sean Hayes: Once I'm into it, it takes a toll on my arms and my hands every night from playing it, so I'm just trying to do as much self-care as I can by ice-bathing my arms right after the show every night. Then I take some vitamins that are hopefully anti-inflammatory-ish and I wear these during the day and I'm showing you their compression sleeves.

Alison Stewart: Lara, as a pianist, Sean Hayes talking about wearing compression sleeves and icing his arms after having to play that on stage, he plays a very furious version of it, what is it like to play this piece?

Lara Downes: For me, that's become a complicated question because I play so many different versions of this piece. Tonight, I'm playing the original jazz band version from 1924, so the version that was heard on this night in 1924. I also play the solo version that Sean is talking about. I play the 1942 version with big symphony orchestras, and of course, I play my own new version, which has all kinds of new elements. I think it's a brain exercise for me more than anything else. It's such well-known terrain, but then with each of those versions, I go off in different directions. It's a very multi-layered relationship at this point.

Alison Stewart: Eric, the story goes that Gershwin only found out he was meant to be premiering a new work about a month ahead of time. His brother Ira was reading the newspaper and found an article announcing a jazz concerto to be written by George and performed by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra, and apparently, George Gershwin had forgotten about it. [laughs] As a composer, what does this story add to the mythology and the legacy of Rhapsody in Blue?

Eric Jacobsen: Obviously, legend is so important for music in general, and maybe specifically of the music that comes from years and years ago, such as we have Beethoven's 7. His second movement at the premiere, supposedly, the audience wouldn't stop applauding unless the orchestra and Beethoven agreed to play the 2nd Movement again because it was so good. It just brings chills. Certainly, it throws out the idea of applause between movements as not okay, and then you look at Rite of Spring by Stravinsky and you remember if that piece, that was the piece that the audience erupted. There were riots and, "How could that possibly be? This music is terrible." "Oh, this music is the greatest thing ever."

Funny that we celebrate these hundred-year anniversaries. Beethoven's 250th was recently, the Stravinsky Rite Spring was about a decade ago, and now, today, 100 years ago on a snowy February 12th, this piece by Gershwin was premiered. Isn't it funny that Beethoven and Rite of Spring may be accepted as canon? These are pieces that are not questioned as wonderful and brilliant and historic, and Gershwin still has edge to it. People still look at as well, what is this piece? Is it classical music that dabbles in jazz? Is it jazz that dabbles in classical? Is it taking music that Gershwin was appropriating? Is it classical music that has a new spirit?

Either way, there's this edge effect of looking outside of itself, which is so beautiful. That particular story about George being on the train from Boston to New York and hearing, "Oh, gosh, I'm supposed to have this piece premiere in a month." Which my brother, who's the composer, I have a feeling you've been in deadlines like that before, but there is something about that story. There's something about the rush to finish something. I think it's Bernstein's words, to do something great you need a great idea and not quite enough time. I think by having this rush, this cram, we've all felt it, whether it's like college, year-end finals and we have to cram, and three days later, we don't remember anything that we studied.

Or we're getting ready for that promotion, you got to put yourself forward, or studying for a concert. It exists. I think this piece, when you listen to it, there's an essence that is urgent and maybe that is part of the mysticism of this piece. That there's urgency and excitement and maybe it's because he didn't quite have enough time.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Let's talk to, I think it's Toyin Diaz. Hi, Toyin.

Toyin Spellman-Diaz: That's right. Hi. Toyin Spellman-Diaz. Hi, Lara and Colin and Eric. it's nice to hear you. I'm the oboist of Imani Winds and I've been fans of all of you guys forever.

Eric Jacobsen: Congrats on your recent Grammy.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Toyin Spellman-Diaz: Oh, thank you. We were in the same category and I was sure you guys were going to win, but I'm honored to have been in the same category with you all in the Grammys.

Colin Jacobsen: Totally.

Eric Jacobsen: Thank you.

Toyin Spellman-Diaz: I'm calling because I just played at Carnegie Hall. I'm calling as a musician and the musician's perspective of being in the orchestra while that amazing piece is going on. I was playing second oboe, so I sit directly in front of the clarinettist as they're getting ready for that iconic solo. I can tell you David Sapadin really nailed it with The New York Pops this past weekend with Lee Musiker as the soloist. I wanted to say that Lee took Gershwin's lead and made up the Cadenzas in Rhapsody in Blue because, like you said, it was written so quickly that in three and a half weeks or so, that he didn't have time to write down all the piano parts, so he made it up.

Lee Musiker did the same thing in the wonderful New York Pops concert this past weekend. I'll tell you, I've never seen such a standing O at the Carnegie Hall, but it's really fun to be part of an ensemble while all of that is rushing by you.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. What a great super caller. Let's talk to Benjamin from Staten Island. Hi, Benjamin.

Benjamin: Hi. What strikes me about Rhapsody and Blue, I wanted to talk about my favorite recording. It's by Andre Previn. When I first came across Rhapsody and Blue in high school, classical music wasn't my thing, but I would drop a few dollars on the budget recordings. I had a recording from some symphony orchestra from Europe. It was very straightforward, it was very staged. There wasn't much change to it and about 15 years later, I listened to the Andre Previn recording. He was a jazz musician and it showed how much dynamics there are to the piece. He slows down a lot, he pauses a lot more than the Hungarian orchestra.

Alison Stewart: Benjamin, I'm going to dive in here because before we run out of time, I want to make sure we get to Lara's version of Rhapsody and Blue Reimagined. Let me play a little bit of it and we can talk about it on the other side.

[MUSIC - Lara Downes: Rhapsody and Blue Reimagined]

Alison Stewart: Lara, it sounds like you had great fun re-imagining this piece.

Lara Downes: Fun is a good word, yes. It's that energy. Eric was talking about the energy and the enthusiasm and the usefulness, I think, that we feel in this piece. Gershwin was so young. All of this stuff was young. America was still young and jazz was very young. When I've been thinking about this piece and the 100th anniversary, there was a lot that I wanted to explore in terms of its origins and also the future of it. The vision that Gershwin had for this piece, he called it The Musical Kaleidoscope of America. I just love that phrase so much. Feeling everything that he was feeling about expressing new languages and listening to new things that were around him and creating this new blend.

The melting pots that he talks about, that he's celebrating in this piece, the melting pot in 1924 versus the melting pot today, so much changes so fast and that's what we've tried to capture in this new version.

Alison Stewart: I also want to remind people on February 29th, the Knights will host Chinese composer Julian at Carnegie Hall, as part of their ongoing Rhapsody project. My guests have been Colin and Eric Jacobsen of the Knights, the artistic directors, conductor, and concertmaster, as well as Lara Downes, pianist. Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined is out now. Thanks to all of you for being with us.

Lara Downes: Thank you, Alison.

Colin Jacobsen: Thank you so much.

Eric Jacobsen: Thanks.

Lara Downes: So much fun and happy birthday.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: There's more All Of It on the way. You know actor Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother, he's also a musician. He's joining me for a listening party for his new solo album, Eulogy Volume 1 as well to discuss a new play he's about to open at The Public Theater this week. Stay with us.

[music]

 

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