Early Years

George Gershwin was born in 1898 to a family of Jewish Ukranian immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. He had three siblings, one of whom would one day play an important role in his professional life. Gershwin had the good fortune to be born into a musical family that supported his early ambitions. He took classical piano lessons from several teachers before forging his own career.

Teenage Life
 

Gershwin left school at the age of 15 and found a job in a music store on Tin Pan Alley. On this famous street in New York, music stores employed pianists to play new songs for customers who had come to purchase sheet music. Gershwin was one of these “song pluggers,” and the job exposed him to a wide variety of music. He began to compose songs of his own, including his first hit “Swanee,” which was made famous by the vaudeville singer Al Jolson.
 

Although he was classically trained, Gershwin loved the jazz that he discovered on Tin Pan Alley, and throughout his career he would write music that incorporated elements of both styles. Of his music he once said that "true music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today."

George collaborated with his brother Ira, a lyricist, on several Broadway shows including Lady Be Good, Crazy For You, and Of Thee I Sing, for which they were awarded a Pulitzer Prize. From these musicals, the brothers had many hit singles that were covered by numerous singers and played on the radio.
 

Gershwin’s classical training was expressed through his orchestral compositions, including Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris. He also wrote the music for numerous films, earning an Academy Award nomination for his original song “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.”
 

One of Gershwin’s most significant compositions was Porgy and Bess, an opera that tells the story of a black community in Charleston, South Carolina. Gershwin called it a “folk opera,” and he extensively studied African American music in order to give his score an authentic sound. The show featured an all-black cast, and it proved to be too provocative for a 1935 American audience to embrace. The show was a commercial failure, but it is now considered to be one of the most important American musical works. It is still widely performed today.