MUSIC
George Gershwin ( born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned jazz, popular and clas
Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris, intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style; Maurice Ravel voiced similar objections when Gershwin inquired about studying with him. He subsequently composed An American in Paris, returned to New York City and wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, it came to be considered one of the most important American operas of the 20th century and an American cultural classic.
Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed several film scores. He died in 1937, only 38 years old, of a brain tumor. His compositions have been adapted for use in film and television, with many becoming jazz standards.
Biography
Ancestors
Gershwin's parents were both Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His paternal grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, was born in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), and had served for 25 years as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army to earn the right of free travel and residence as a Jew, finally retiring near Saint Petersburg, Russia. Jakov's teenage son, Moishe, George Gershwin's father, worked as a leather cutter for women's shoes. George's mother, Roza Bruskina, was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Moishe met Roza in Vilna, Russian Empire (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where her father worked as a furrier. She and her family moved to New York because of increasing anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia, changing her first name to Rose. Moishe, faced with compulsory military service if he remained in Russia, moved to America as soon as he could afford to (arrived on August 14, 1890). Once in New York, he changed his first name to Morris. Gershowitz lived with a maternal uncle in Brooklyn, working as a foreman in a women's shoe factory. He married Rose on July 21, 1895, and Gershowitz soon Anglicized his name to Gershwine.Their first child, Ira Gershwin, was born on December 6, 1896, after which the family moved into a second-floor apartment at 242 Snediker Avenue in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn.
