What were you surprised to learn about George Gershwin and his music? Join the conversation by commenting below.

Get ready for Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone, at the Paramount Center Mainstage MAY 30 - JUN 10, by sharing some of your favorite Gershwin melodies! Comment below and see what songs and numbers other audience members enjoy.

By Corrie Glanville

FILMS

Manhattan (1979)

No matter how many times I have seen Woody Allen’s Manhattan, I never tire of its shimmering black and white cinematography, its equally sparkling wit and its timeless Gershwin score and possibly the best use of “Rhapsody in Blue” in a film, ever. While this comic masterpiece follows the fate of two couples as they fall in and out of love, Allen’s real love affair is with the city itself. Zubin Mehta leads the New York Philharmonic on the soundtrack, which includes sweeping instrumental versions of such favorites as “Someone To Watch Over Me,” “Oh, Lady Be Good” and “Embraceable You.” 

Funny Face (1957)

Although only four of Gershwin’s songs from his 1927 Broadway musical were included in the film version, this gorgeous MGM musical boasts Audrey Hepburn as a shy bookstore clerk and Fred Astaire as fashion photographer, Dick Avery, loosely based on Richard Avedon who actually designed the opening credits. When Astaire discovers Hepburn in a Greenwich Village bookstore, he convinces her after much protesting, to go to Paris and become his model. The unlikely opposites conveniently fall in love, but it’s awfully hard not to be charmed by Hepburn who spends most of the film cavorting all over the City of Lights in costumes by Hubert de Givenchy.

An American in Paris (1951)

It’s hard to imagine a more romantic ode to Paris (even if it was shot in Hollywood) than the sixteen minute ballet in Vincent Minelli’s 1951 MGM musical as Gene Kelly and the exquisite Leslie Caron dance their way through an unforgettable dream sequence. The love story between an American painter and a Parisian shop girl is told partly through dance numbers choreographed by Kelly and set to the songs of George and Ira Gershwin including the classics “S’Wonderful,” “I Got Rhythm” and “Our Love is Here To Stay.”

BOOKS

The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift and My Family’s Legacies Infidelities by Katherine Weber (2011)

Author Katherine Weber’s maternal grandmother was the composer Kay Swift who became the first woman to have a Broadway hit show, Fine & Dandy, and carried on a passionate decade-long affair with George Gershwin…though she was already married to economist, James Paul Warburg. Of this intimate family portrait, The New York Times says “Ms. Weber is able to arrange words musically, so that they capture the elusive, unfinished melodies that haunt our memories of childhood. As her grandmother’s lover might have put it, she’s got rhythm.”

George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait by Walter Rimmler (2009)

While Gershwin was able to achieve enormous popular success before his tragic death at age 38, he never garnered the validation he so desperately wanted by the “serious” music critics until decades later. Walter Rimmler includes newly discovered letters by Kay Swift and Ira and Leonore Gershwin in his biography of the beloved composer. The Wall Street Journal pronounces, “More thorough biographies than Mr. Rimler’s slender volume exist … but for those of us interested less in the technical details of Gershwin’s music and its performance than in the comet called George Gershwin that blazed briefly across American skies, Mr. Rimler is the astronomer of choice.” 

The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole and a Crew of About Fifty by Wilfred Sheed (2008)

Wilfred Sheed looks at the Golden Age of American songwriting from Tin Pan Alley to Hollywood in this anecdotal, musical history. Beginning with Irvin Berlin, a Lower East Side immigrant who composed his way from downtown music halls to Broadway, Sheed spent years interviewing the great songwriters and their families in order to create a portrait of dazzling musical era and its major players.  

 MUSIC

Porgy & Bess: New Broadway Cast Recording (2012)

I consider myself privileged to have seen Audra McDonald’s achingly beautiful performance last fall at the American Repertory Theater in the reimagined version of Porgy & Bess directed by Diane Paulus. Now enjoying great success on Broadway, it’s hard to wait for the cast recording (releasing on May 22) which also features Norm Lewis as Porgy and David Allen Grier as Sportin’ Life. I couldn’t agree more with The New York Times that said of Audra McDonald’s Bess “it’s a God-touched voice that turns suffering and ugliness into beauty.”  

George Gershwin: Ultimate Collection (1998)

For those who want a collection that includes both the best of Gershwin’s popular favorites as well as his symphonic works, this is the perfect 2-CD set. The singers include Sarah Vaughn, Fred Astaire, Dinah Washington, Bing Crosby and the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald while the Cleveland Orchestra and the Boston Pops interpret overtures from Funny Face, An American in Paris and Porgy & Bess.

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue / An American in Paris by Leonard Bernstein (1997)

Since ArtsEmerson is hosting Hershey Felder in his solo performances as both George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, this CD would seem especially fitting to recommend. In fact, Leonard Bernstein was an enthusiast of Gershwin’s classical work when few would take him seriously. Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in the two title works along with Ferde Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite. “

What were you surprised to learn about Leonard Bernstein and his music? Join the conversation by commenting below.

By Corrie Glanville

Few contemporary theatre artists have the versatility of Hershey Felder, the Canadian-born pianist/singer/actor/conductor whose specialty is bringing seminal composers to life on stage, including Gershwin, Beethoven, Chopin, and most recently, Leonard Bernstein.

Felder, who began studying music and acting at the age of five in Montreal, had grown up listening to Bernstein and even met the composer before his death in 1990. But he actually knew little of George Gershwin (the subject of George Gershwin Alone)until he was 19 and performed “Rhapsody in Blue” at his concert debut in London. “Nothing prepared me for the live audience response,” said Felder. “I was very taken with how much the public loves Gershwin music. I played the Rhapsody again and again, and the public loves it, and this is true of any performance of it, not just mine.”

After consultation with the Gershwins who opened their archives and private collection to him, Felder embarked on years of research and the meticulous process of constructing a portrait of a popular figure that many either adored or despised. Felder has said that he created “the character of George Gershwin in order to tell the story of a man who died before truly knowing the depth of his contribution, and of course, had the opportunity to play a work that the public all over the world relishes.”

After being asked by respected colleagues to portray Leonard Bernstein, Felder gave the possibility much consideration before deciding to create Maestro, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2010. Like so many people, Felder was enormously influenced by Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, which served to bring classical music to a wider audience. But Felder also chose to delve into the darker side of Bernstein’s long and often turbulent life including his relationship with his father, his struggles with bisexuality and the antagonistic reception of his later work by critics and the public.  

Unlike Gershwin, with Maestro Felder portrays a figure from the more recent past. Many musicians who actually played with or for Bernstein are still alive. This allowed Felder even more opportunities for research, although he notes: “I know that I can never capture entire lives in a 90-minute presentation, but what I can do is give the essence of what the individual was about, and to do that, one has to know pretty much everything there is to know.” When asked what he wants people to take away from Maestro, Felder says simply: “Bernstein’s genius.”

As for Felder’s own encounter with the legend, he says: “I was in that circle in New York; I met him just at the end of his life. I was just a kid. It was interesting to create this piece, especially with the family members still around. I panicked when they came to see the show. But it was fine. There were a lot of tears.”

Hershey Felder in Maestro: Leonard Bernstein runs APRIL 28 - MAY 20 at the Paramount Center Mainstage.  

By Corrie Glanville

FILMS

Leonard Bernstein: Omnibus - The Historic TV Broadcasts (2010)

Long before Alastair Cooke became the host of Masterpiece Theatre, he made his American television debut in the long running interview program Omnibus, which featured prominent figures in the arts and sciences. Leonard Bernstein first appeared with Cooke in 1954 with his fascinating analysis of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Bernstein won two Emmy awards for his shows on jazz, conducting, musical comedy, 20th century composition and Bach. Now, for the first time since their original live broadcasts, these acclaimed performances can be seen in their entirety, restored and re-mastered on DVD.

Leonard Bernstein, Reaching for the Note (1998) 

No other conductor did more to bring classical music to a wider audience than Leonard Bernstein. This PBS American Masters portrait offers both a professional and personal glimpse of Bernstein’s life from his early years as a young conductor to his later triumphs as a composer while touching on his private battle with depression. Along with archival footage, revealing interviews with his brother and children as well as collaborators Jerome Robbins, Isaac Stern and Stephen Sondheim are included.

The Making of West Side Story - Leonard Bernstein (1985)

This feature-length documentary takes us behind the scenes as Bernstain records the first-ever complete recording of his masterpiece with opera superstars Kiri Te Kanawa, José Carreras and Tatiana Troyanos; it alternates between the intimacy of the rehearsal room to the final takes of beloved numbers including “Tonight,” “America” and “Maria.”

BOOKS

Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination  by Misha Berson (2011)

Award-winning theatre critic for the Seattle Times and regular contributor to American Theatre magazine, Misha Berson has fashioned a comprehensive view of one of the most influential musicals in history. From its four brilliant and turbulent creators (Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents) to Hollywood film success to continued revivals, Berson examines the impact of West Side Story on the American musical particularly as a predecessor to the “youth musicals” of Hair and Rent.  

Leonard Bernstein: American Original by Burton Bernstein & Barbara Haws (2008)

While not a comprehensive biography, this series of essays including a forward by his brother, Burton, covers the period from 1943 to 1976, considered Bernstein’s most prolific. Each chapter is written by a different author who explores the astonishing force of Bernstein’s life and work as composer, conductor, social activist and cultural icon. Filled with black and white photos, Booklist called this “a flat-out wonderful book.”

The Joy of Music by Leonard Bernstein (2004)

Originally published in 1959, this collection was the composer’s first work and unlike traditional (if stodgy) writing about classical music, Bernstein used the device of imaginary conversations to illuminate his passion for music in a more intimate tone. A perfect introduction to a towering figure in American music.

 MUSIC

Joshua Bell ~ Bernstein - West Side Story Suite (2001)

Nominated for the 2001 Grammy Award for “Best Crossover Album,” violinist Joshua Bell, a sensation in the classical music stratosphere, demonstrates his commanding artistry in arrangements from “Lonely Town” and “New York, New York” from On the Town and composer John Corigliano’s exquisite arrangement of  “Make Our Garden Grow” from Candide. This collection also includes Bernstein’s riveting “Serenade after Plato’s Symposium.”

The Complete Solo Piano Music of Leonard Bernstein (1999)

Internationally celebrated as both a conductor and virtuoso pianist, Alexander Frey performs the 33 tracks on this collection of Bernstein’s lesser known piano compositions. BBC Music Magazine declared that Frey “plays with not only accomplishment but an audible deep affection for the music and the composer who inspired such devotion in so many.”

Leonard Bernstein’s New York (1996)

Praised by Entertainment Weekly as “lovely and sumptuous,” this collection features 19 tracks from Bernstein’s On the Town, West Side Story, Fancy Free and Wonderful Town.  Backed by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, these beloved classics are reinterpreted by Broadway greats such as Mandy Patinkin, Audra McDonald and Donna Murphy as well as soprano Dawn Upshaw.

Were you inspired by the interactions in Café Variations? Would you have the courage to ask “is this seat taken?” Join the conversation by commenting below.

Magda Romanska, Emerson professor and dramaturg for Café Variations provides behind the scenes insight into the production…

The trouble is
I can’t make sense of my life at all.
I can’t see a beginning and a middle and an end
It seems to me to be just a bunch of random vivid moments
I think, when I am on my deathbed,
I won’t look back on a story of my life
I’ll just remember a constellation of moments
vivid moments
but just that.

– Charles Mee, Café le Monde

In our precarious world of virtual friends appearing and disappearing under our fingertips at the click of the mouse, SITI Company is something akin to a miracle. Founded in 1992 by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki to redefine and revitalize contemporary theatre in the United States through an international collaboration, SITI has just celebrated its 20th anniversary.

I have been working with the group on Café Variations for six weeks now. As a bona fide lifelong social outcast, I’ve doggedly trained myself – by desire and necessity – to descry the most diminutive movements: the elusive twitching of one’s eyelid, the subtle smirk at the corner of one’s mouth, the furtive glances, sudden silences, subdued signs and stealthy stares, the entire shadow game of our past passing through our bodies and our faces. The skill can be both a blessing and a curse for the dramaturg. I dubiously pride myself on being able to read with paranoid precision all of that inconspicuous symphony of micro-gestures that shamelessly betrays our history: recoiled-from love affairs, thwarted ambitions, the quotidian discontents of our lives.

Like any group of people who have known each other for over two decades, I expected SITI to carry its own history, but I can discern none of it. We have been working together now for six weeks, and the invisible incessantly eludes me. In the rehearsal room, there is no past; there is even no future. There is only the present moment, the now, the immediate. Every rehearsal room aspires to create that unbearable lightness of the present moment, when both past and future are shed like street clothes, but SITI turns being in the present into an art . . . a metaphor for theatre and for life . . .

The history of Western drama is invariably connected to Western man’s ontological and epistemological predicament – we construct meaning out of our lives in the same way we construct our dramas: following the Aristotelian model. According to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and the first dramaturg, a well-structured play should have a beginning, a middle and an end. In this model, the meaning of the drama comes from the well-defined progression of deliberately arranged narrative elements: exposition, conflict, climax, denouement, catharsis. However we choose to create meaning in our lives – through love, sex, God, family, intellectual, artistic, altruistic or hedonistic pleasures – we follow Aristotle’s narrative structure, with a redemptive narrative and hope for a cathartic death at the end. This is particularly true for Americans, the eternal optimists compulsively making sense out of the most random, violent, senseless events – no death can go unredeemed, with foundations, memorials or new laws proudly flying in the face of the cosmic meaninglessness of it all.

But that is not how our lives are: old love affairs end with no poignant closure; unresolved friendships we’ve lost on the way to better pastures find no redemptions; lost letters, forgotten people, meaningless tragedies and moments of pure eudemonia appear and disappear with no higher purpose, out of nowhere and for no reason. Our lives are made up of a constellation of moments, with no promise of catharsis. The elusive connection between our dramatic tradition and our existential predicament is perhaps the reason behind the luxating anxiety we feel when theatre postpones the alembic gratification.

Café Variations is constructed from a constellation of moments from many lives, some arranged into stories, with a beginning, middle and end, others left unresolved, without closure, without meaning. The denizens of the café move through each others’ lives abruptly and on the sly, cruelly and gently, torn and lost, trying to both hold on to and escape one other, driven by love, fear and desire. Leaving and moving on, driving each other crazy, violently yearning for human touch, and megalomaniacally indulging in the solipsistic pleasures of rejection, they seduce, comfort, amuse and savage each other. We, the Tellurian creatures vis-à-vis our serendipitous universe. If you leave our café with one thought, perhaps let it be this one: there might be no grand meaning to our existence – perhaps “all of this happens by chance, by pure chance” – perhaps our lives are just that: “a constellation of moments” – but so what? Maybe this realization is as tragic as it can be funny. Maybe neither happiness nor unhappiness has to make sense. Maybe it is still all all right . . .

Dramaturgy student Tierra Bonser interviews Barney O’Hanlon, choreographer.

Barney O’Hanlon, aside from playing the role of Harold in Café Variations, is working as choreographer on this (as many of the designers have described) immense piece of musical theatre comparable in size and vastness even to an opera. With as many as thirty people on stage and dancing at one time, O’Hanlon said his ultimate hope in regards to the choreography is for “the audience to want to get up and dance, to tap their toes,” and to feel the joy of seeing swing-style dance in full action. He and I talked about the intrinsic joy in that kind of movement and O’Hanlon mentioned how, because humans are full of empathy ions, when a body sees another body moving in space, it cannot help but respond with another kind of movement. So, ladies and gentlemen, plan on bouncing out of your seats.

Drawing on inspirations ranging from Pina Bausch to Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, O’Hanlon said his process began with learning the music by heart. He already had his eye on two pieces of Gershwin instrumentals to be what he called “chair dances” (the name is self explanatory) and started with them alone in the studio. From there he incorporated dances from the 1940’s and 1950’s for the big group scenes and continues to develop as the process continues.

O’Hanlon has been working with Anne Bogart since before the creation of the SITI Company so her style and process are not new to him, and he mentioned Anne’s interest, even in the ‘80’s, in how people are together in both the public and private spaces. He recalled a piece that the two of them worked on called “Behavior in Public Places”, based on the book of the same title by Erving Goffman; the same book that was revisited in the work-shopping phase of Café Variations. O’Hanlon talked about the way café culture has changed and, even now, how very different it is as a cultural phenomenon in the U.S. compared to Europe. He looked at me in all seriousness and with a gesture of his hand said, “What we’re doing right now…is rare. Especially now because you have…you know,” and he pointed surreptitiously behind me to a student on a laptop, completely absorbed and ignorant to the world passing by the window in front of his face but behind his glossy screen.

I nodded and smiled because it is true. I can’t think of the last time I went to a café with the intention of meeting someone just to talk. It’s always for a meeting, an interview, to write a paper or read a book, but then I must ask, why, if I am seeking no interaction, would I even go to a café at all? And herein lies one of the many facets of the play in production as we speak.

Image 1: Gene Kelly

Image 2: Gene Kelly & Mitzi Gaynor

Image 3: Gene Kelly, Taina Elg, Mitzi Gaynor & Kay Kendall in “Les Girls”

Image 4: Pina Bausch, Kontakthof

Emerson dramaturgy student Tierra Bonser interviews Brian Scott, Café Variations’ lighting designer.

Brian Scott describes his role as lighting designer as a “visual storyteller with light composition, the purpose of which is to support the way a story is being told as a whole and to acknowledge the importance of smaller stories within it that can be brought out through wide shots or close ups.” Thank goodness this was a phone interview, because I was knocked off my feet momentarily.

I’ve been training as a performer at Emerson for the last four years; though my track has taken me through many production positions and I’ve even worked as a tech for three of those years in the Cabaret student performance space doing basic lighting and sound, I never really connected the real meaning of lighting design in a production. I always humbly acknowledged the importance of this stage element and even was awed by its visual power, but with one fell swoop Scott changed my whole perspective; suddenly he was an active storyteller with as much stage presence as an actor in the space. He said he sees himself as a:

“Visual dramaturg whose job is to develop what the company is finding in rehearsal, but also to develop those parts of the production that I connect with emotionally. I help to craft the world of the play so that things that are important to me are seen, but also I must give the audience openness to see and follow what compels them in the story.”

Does this make him an editor, a visual manipulator? If the answer were yes, then Scott would argue that he isn’t doing his job. He does not wish to edit an audiences’ perspective of the play, he wishes to give them the opportunity to see more and to decide what they think is important and why. Scott said of Café Variations, “this piece has power enough to give audiences the opportunity to find their own bliss,” implying that if he were any kind of visual editor the audience would be trapped in finding his bliss.

As far as process is concerned, much of the work is intuitive and created when Scott enters the actual performance space. Ahead of time he has preliminary discussions with the company to determine the anticipated light requirements in the way of spotlights, specials and stage washes; but from that very basic outline, Scott enters the rehearsal ready to respond to the bodies on stage and the feelings he is picking up while watching—to fill in the so-called coloring and features of his design. In a way, what he is doing is similar to a location painter. The artist can prepare by appropriating all the required materials and might even have a sketch of the sunset in mind, but only when he arrives on the spot and sees the vast array of colors and feels the warmth of the sun’s rays on his face can he truly capture it in paint. Scott is a painter only his medium is light and his pallet is emotional resonance.

Lighting Design Inspirations

Image 1: Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942

Image 2: Edward Hopper, Summer Evening, 1947

Image 3: Edward Hopper, Rooms By the Sea, 1951