george and ira gershwin

George and Ira Gershwin will always be remembered as the songwriting team whose voice was synonymous with the sounds and style of the Jazz Age. By the time of their 1924 Broadway hit, LADY, BE GOOD!, George had worked with lyricist Buddy DeSylva on a series of revues, GEORGE WHITE’S SCANDALS, while Ira enjoyed success with composer Vincent Youmans on TWO LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE. But from 1924 until George’s death in 1937, the brothers wrote almost exclusively with each other, composing over two dozen scores for Broadway and Hollywood. Though they had many individual song hits, their greatest achievement may have been the elevation of musical comedy to an American art form. With their trilogy of political satires — STRIKE UP THE BAND, the Pulitzer Prize-winning OF THEE I SING, and its sequel, LET ’EM EAT CAKE (all three written with playwrights George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind) – they helped raise popular musical theatre to a new level of sophistication. Their now-classic folk opera, PORGY AND BESS (co-written with DuBose Heyward), is constantly revived in opera houses and theatres throughout the world. Concurrently with the Gershwins’ musical theatre and film work, George attained great success in the concert arena as a piano virtuoso, conductor, and composer of such celebrated works as RHAPSODY IN BLUE, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, and the CONCERTO IN F.