American Rhapsody surprised me. I thought I was going to hear a tribute to George Gershwin. Instead, I saw a drama of two pianists. One is a classically trained pianist (Randall Kramer) who has been contracted to play Rhapsody in Blue with a local orchestra. The pianist struggles with the piece so he hires a local jazz pianist (Richard Satterwhite) to “teach” him how to play Rhapsody in Blue.
What the white pianist learns about Rhapsody in Blue from the Black pianist is that George Gershwin studied Blues, Ragtime, and Jazz to create his musical masterpiece. As the Black pianist plays the key songs (listed below) an “imaginary” group of singers appear to perform and sing the songs. Along with the classically trained pianist, the audience learns about the influences that produced Rhapsody in Blue.
The local theater group who put on American Rhapsody was terrific. The two pianists, who performed live on stage, were exceptional. If American Rhapsody shows up in your neighborhood, don’t miss it! GRADE: A
Never heard of that one, but it does sound good. You can’t go wrong with “Rhapsody in Blue.”
Jeff, AMERCIAN RHAPSODY is like a master class in how to play Gershwin’s masterpiece. This local theater company did a marvelous job with this play!
This sounds wonderful. Sadly the song list didn’t show up, but Gershwin is wonderful
The last play I saw was a couple of weeks ago at the Carpenter theater on UCLB. 2 of the stars are friends of a friend and we got pix and signed playbills after. It was a cute show set in WWII.
The next play for me is in May – Forbidden Broadway. I first saw these on my first trip to see boy from oz in IIRC 2004. They used to do previews of their new season here every other year, but haven’t for about 10 years.
Maggie, sorry you couldn’t see the list of musical numbers. WORDPRESS is acting up again. I think I fixed it so please try again.
Music, yes, too bad they had to play the race card.
Rick, the whole point of AMERICAN RHAPSODY was to show race played a huge part in Gershwin’s music.
And, as a jazz fan, Rick, you have to know how off-point that criticism is. The point of music, as this menu helps demonstrate, is that music is a collaborative thing. Joplin was the most important contributor to Classic Ragtime, and was black;. Joseph Lamb, one of his key colleagues, was white. Politics and society does form art, and art often manages to get around the barriers the idiots put up.
The numbers are showing now.
Back in the late ’70s, we saw Eubie Blake playing the piano downtown Brooklyn at an early Atlantic Antic street fair. He had the longest fingers I’ve ever seen. He was about 90 at the time.
Jeff, the two pianists in AMERICAN RHAPSODY had long fingers, too. And they could really play! WORDPRESS was messing with me again. I had to fix the MUSICAL NUMBERS so they would appear every time not just some of the time (when WORDPRESS felt like it!).
Enormous hands don’t hurt, as Art Tatum also demonstrated.
Me, I have pianist’s wrists (slender) and miner’s hands (short fingered and all spatulate),
Todd, I have long fingers, but I played the trumpet in High School, not keyboards.
I played our Optigan synthesizer (or organ, if one insists) worse than anyone else in the family…and went from there to being a bad trombonist in school, though for a bad one I plated pretty well by ear.
Todd, one of my few regrets in Life is that I stopped playing my trumpet in High School. The deal was the school would provide free lessons but in return you had to join the Marching Band. I baulked at that so that ended my trumpet playing days. My Mom and Dad were both working to support five kids so asking them to pay for trumpet lessons was out of the question.
Plating (or bleating) might well describe what I was doing.
This looks to be an interesting attempt to wring something fresh out of the old Rhapsody warhorse. You neglected to credit Kramer with the concept and book. As it happened, I heard Gershwin’s solo version of the piece performed last month in a recital by a local pianist. Is that the way this performance concludes? Or just an abridgement of it? I forwarded your blog entry to Steve Schwartz, Gershwin scholar, to inquire whether he was aware of this project.
Art, I seem to remember Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” being longer than what I heard in AMERICAN RHAPSODY. It sounded great, though!
A bit OT
Gershwin’s parents were Ukrainian Jews. I found that really interesting just as in pop music many young Jews cooperated with black people in the years after WW 2.
Coincidence?
Wolf, hope you’re experiencing a fast recovery! No, I don’t think that it’s a coincidence.
And Italian-Americans. Also not coincidental.