Episode Details

George Gershwin was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who grew up on the Lower East Side and taught himself piano on a neighbor's instrument. He merged jazz, blues, and classical music into something that sounded unmistakably American, and he did it before turning forty. Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess, and An American in Paris defined what American music could be.

This episode traces Gershwin from Tin Pan Alley through his rise as a concert composer, his groundbreaking opera, and his sudden death from a brain tumor at thirty-eight.

• He composed Rhapsody in Blue in just three weeks for a 1924 concert
• Porgy and Bess was initially a commercial failure but is now considered the greatest American opera
• He died of a brain tumor at thirty-eight, at the peak of his creative powers
• His songs have been recorded by virtually every major jazz and pop vocalist of the twentieth century