George Gershwin

Gershwin Plays Gershwin: Piano Rolls

In the 1920's one of the most influential composers of that time was George Gershwin.

In this paper I will discuss Gershwin's life as a child and his upbringing and how his music

expressed the dreams of every American Citizen by mixing different styles of music like

Jewish, black, jazz, classical, blues and put them into one genre and created absolute

music.

* The artist's biography, emphasizing the place of the recording in the artist's career

George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York, September 26, 1898. He was the second son of Morris and Rose Gershwin. -Ira- brother-sisters..........................

Morris Gershwin was a Russian Jewish immigrant who decided to immigrate to the United States for reasons such as

It was only natural for George, at the age of 18, as he sat down to cut a piano roll of his first published piece, a lighthearted song called When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em.

* The music itself: its kind or genre, characteristics and qualities

"Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Classical chart and made its mark on The Billboard 200 album chart.

* The making of the recording (date, location, producer, etc.)

"Anybody who was anybody made piano rolls," says Bob Berkman, CEO of 94-year-old, Buffalo, N.Y.-based QRS Music Rolls Inc., which is considered the only mass maker of new piano roll music and now owns the only existing manufacturer of piano roll players, Story & Clark.

During the player piano's glory days--when some 2.5 million players were sold--fans could chose from performances by Gustav Mahler, Edvard Grieg, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, Claude Debussy, Sergel Prokofiev, Percy Grainger, Leopold Godowsky, Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Moritz Rosenthal, Josef Lhevinne, Josef Hoffman, Paderewski, Victor Herbert, Fats Waller, Eddy Duchin, Artur Rubinstein, and Vladimir Horowitz.

* Technical aspects of the recording, its place in the history of recording technology

To make the release, Gershwin's original piano rolls were played using a rare 1911 device called a Pianola. This machine, which has expression levers and felt-tipped "fingers," can be positioned in front of any piano to allow playback of piano rolls. For this recording, it was linked with a Yamaha Disklavier, an acoustic piano fitted with a computer and optic sensors. The Disklavier can record and play back a live performance on 3.5 inch floppy disc. A floppy disc recorded from the playback of the original piano rolls was then played back through the Disklavier in a recording studio to create the CD (Billboard,