George Gershwin

While the clarinet glissando that opens George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" identifies the sound of American music for most of the world, the United States lags behind other nations in honoring its greatest composer during the centennial of his birth.Fortunately, Gershwin has not been forgotten by the Baltimore Symphony, which devotes its programs for the next three weeks entirely to his music. This week (April 30-May 2), Andre Raphel Smith conducts the orchestra and the Morgan State University Choir in the concert version of Gershwin's opera, "Porgy and Bess."

It's a kind of a musical homecoming. "Porgy and Bess," the first and, many would say, greatest American opera, returns to Baltimore after a long absence with a large-scale production this week at Morgan State University, featuring several well-established singers who have come back to their alma mater for the occasion. In a way, the character of Bess is coming home, too. The creator of that role, Baltimore-born soprano Anne Brown, studied at what was then Morgan College before moving to New York and sharing the spotlight at the 1935 premiere of "Porgy and Bess.

The harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler was 15 years old and trying to get a job with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in Manhattan when he met George Gershwin."

Talk about Smalltimore. Ethel Ennis, Baltimore's grande dame of jazz, was in Oslo in 1990 to perform the national anthem at a ceremony commemorating the first American killed in World War II. In the audience was Anne Brown, the American soprano who, literally, put the Bess in Porgy and Bess - George Gershwin became so enraptured with her singing, he expanded both her role and the title of a new opera he was writing, originally called, simply, Porgy....

TURIN, ITALY -- He's been dead for 68 years, but George Gershwin may never have been a livelier presence than now in a place where he craved acceptance -- the concert hall. In fact, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is currently touring Europe with a program that features an all-Gershwin first half: An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue. By request. In fact, six out of seven requests. The BSO has already played it twice in Spain and last night in Turin to hearty ovations. It will play the program again tonight in Parma, Italy, tomorrow in Slovenia and Saturday in Vienna to close the tour.

When George Gershwin's "An American in Paris" got its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1928, Oscar Thompson, music critic for the New York Evening Post, was not impressed. Complaining of its "blunt banality and ballyhoo vulgarity," Thompson predicted the piece would soon be forgotten.Although he admitted that its opening-night audience found the work to be "good fun," Thompson dismissed Gershwin's attempt to bring the jazz idiom into symphonic music as a mere fad. "To conceive of a symphonic audience listening to it with any degree of pleasure or patience twenty years from now, when whoopee is longer even a word, is another matter," he sniffed.

Had American composer George Gershwin never met Anne Brown, the title of his greatest work almost certainly would have been shorter by half.Gershwin was inspired to create his masterpiece in 1926 after reading Dubose Heyward's novel "Porgy," about a beggar in Charleston, S.C., who falls in love with a beautiful woman of easy virtue. His planned "folk opera" was to have the same name.By 1934, the composer was hard at work on the score and was beginning to audition singers. He cast a brilliant, handsome baritone, singer Todd Duncan, in the title role of Porgy.

Hershey Felder is a concert pianist, composer, actor and playwright, as well as a volunteer for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, gourmet cook, visiting scholar at Harvard University and the husband of former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell. He's also the first performer whom the George Gershwin estate has permitted to impersonate the late great American composer on the professional stage. Felder's one-man show, George Gershwin Alone, opens a monthlong run at Ford's Theatre in Washington tomorrow, after engagements in Boston, Palm Beach (twice)

"What is Grandma humming, always humming?" the little girl asks of her mother."Oh, pay no mind, it's just a bit of a song that she's always sung since as long as I can remember." MANY YEARS ago, in New York, I met a young man who claimed to be the illegitimate son of George Gershwin. I believed him if for no other reason than this: You must believe that people are who they say they are or friendship with them is impossible. Thus I accepted his identity as he accepted mine, and we were friends.

The life stories of the Gershwin brothers (lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music by George Gershwin) are interesting and exciting. Tomorrow, the Columbia Orchestra and Comcast present the Fascinatin' Rhythm of their lives in a dramatic multimedia narrative featuring music, words and visuals. Audience members will hear some of the Gershwin brothers' most beloved music, including selections from Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in Blue, I've Got Rhythm, and Strike Up the Band. Along with the Columbia Orchestra, led by maestro Jason Love, performers include professional soloists Carolyn Black-Sotir, vocalist; Arno Drucker, piano; R. Timothy McReynolds, piano/tenor; Thomas Williams, bass/flugel- horn; Richard McReady, banjo/tenor; and an appearance by the Marching Wildecats Band of Wilde Lake High School.

Nearly 73 years have passed since Baltimorean Anne Wiggins Brown, who played the role of Bess in the original production of George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess, hauntingly sang "Summertime" before an audience seated in New York's Alvin Theatre. Broadway was a long way from Brown's girlhood home at 1501 Presstman St. She was born in Baltimore in 1912 or 1915 (there is slight variance on the exact date and month), the oldest of four daughters. Her father was Dr. Harry Francis Brown, a physician and grandson of a slave, and her mother, Mary Allen Wiggins, whose parents were of Scottish-Irish, black and Cherokee Indian descent, sang and played piano.

ART CELEBRATING BLACK ART The 13th Annual Black Heritage Art Show will bring music, art, seminars, celebrities and more to the Baltimore Convention Center. The three-day event includes a silent art auction, a WEAA-sponsored jazz performance, appearances by Jermaine Crawford of The Wire and gospel artist David Chance, and a musical performance competition. .................... The event runs 11 a.m.-9 p.m. tomorrow and 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Admission is $5. Children younger than 13 are admitted free with a paying adult.

George Gershwin: His Life and Work Howard Pollack University of California Press / 884 pages / $39.95 Introduced at Aeolian Hall in New York City on Feb. 12, 1924, by Paul Whiteman and his Palais Royal Orchestra, Rhapsody in Blue received three curtain calls - and became one of the best-known concert works of the 20th century. It "is all New York, all America," George Gershwin, the 26-year-old composer, explained. "It is a picnic party in Brooklyn or a dark-skinned girl singing and shouting her blues in a Harlem cabaret.

The life stories of the Gershwin brothers (lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music by George Gershwin) are interesting and exciting. Tomorrow, the Columbia Orchestra and Comcast present the Fascinatin' Rhythm of their lives in a dramatic multimedia narrative featuring music, words and visuals. Audience members will hear some of the Gershwin brothers' most beloved music, including selections from Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in Blue, I've Got Rhythm, and Strike Up the Band. Along with the Columbia Orchestra, led by maestro Jason Love, performers include professional soloists Carolyn Black-Sotir, vocalist; Arno Drucker, piano; R. Timothy McReynolds, piano/tenor; Thomas Williams, bass/flugel- horn; Richard McReady, banjo/tenor; and an appearance by the Marching Wildecats Band of Wilde Lake High School.

TURIN, ITALY -- He's been dead for 68 years, but George Gershwin may never have been a livelier presence than now in a place where he craved acceptance -- the concert hall. In fact, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is currently touring Europe with a program that features an all-Gershwin first half: An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue. By request. In fact, six out of seven requests. The BSO has already played it twice in Spain and last night in Turin to hearty ovations. It will play the program again tonight in Parma, Italy, tomorrow in Slovenia and Saturday in Vienna to close the tour.

In a musical where the song list includes "Someone To Watch Over Me," "Embraceable You," "They Can't Take That Away From Me," "I Got Rhythm," and "Nice Work If You Can Get It" - George Gershwin mega-standards one and all - you'd expect the score to dominate the proceedings. But that's not the case in Crazy For You, Ken Ludwig's reworked show featuring the songs of George and Ira Gershwin at the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre through Sept. 4. For despite the killer score (which is superimposed atop a witless story line)

The music world loves a birthday party as much as anyone else, so it is with special pleasure that the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra pays homage to George Gershwin, America's songwriter supreme, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.All three youth orchestra ensembles will gather at 7: 30 p.m. Saturday in Maryland Hall in Annapolis for a performance that will conclude the organization's eighth year of concerts.Joining the senior orchestra ensemble and conductor Mark Allen McCoy will be guest pianist Daniel Lau, who will play "Rhapsody In Blue."

George Gershwin: His Life and Work Howard Pollack University of California Press / 884 pages / $39.95 Introduced at Aeolian Hall in New York City on Feb. 12, 1924, by Paul Whiteman and his Palais Royal Orchestra, Rhapsody in Blue received three curtain calls - and became one of the best-known concert works of the 20th century. It "is all New York, all America," George Gershwin, the 26-year-old composer, explained. "It is a picnic party in Brooklyn or a dark-skinned girl singing and shouting her blues in a Harlem cabaret.

First Presbyterian extends invitation to its Pumpkin Patch The Youth Ministry, leaders and church membership of First Presbyterian Church of Howard County will launch the church's first Pumpkin Patch community event during the last two weeks of this month. About one-third of a trailer of pumpkins grown by the Navajo Indian tribe in New Mexico will be on display and for sale at the church. The pumpkins are scheduled to arrive about 5 p.m. tomorrow, weather permitting, and should be available Monday.

Hershey Felder is a concert pianist, composer, actor and playwright, as well as a volunteer for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, gourmet cook, visiting scholar at Harvard University and the husband of former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell. He's also the first performer whom the George Gershwin estate has permitted to impersonate the late great American composer on the professional stage. Felder's one-man show, George Gershwin Alone, opens a monthlong run at Ford's Theatre in Washington tomorrow, after engagements in Boston, Palm Beach (twice)