Duration: 15 minutes

George Gershwin is widely considered one of the greatest and most popular American composers of all time. At age 10, he began playing the piano for his family, and at age 14, he began studying under the acclaimed piano teacher Charles Hambitzer, who once wrote to his sister about Gershwin: “I have a new pupil who will make his mark if anybody will. The boy is a genius.” Though he wrote primarily for Broadway, he was also an accomplished composer of orchestral and piano works, as well as two operas: Porgy and Bess and the one-act opera Blue Monday.

This suite features many of his most popular compositions. Summertime and My Man’s Gone Now, from Porgy and Bess, have been hailed by composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim as “the best lyrics in the musical theater.” Both pieces are also part of the jazz standard, and according to the Guinness Book of World Records, Summertime is the most covered track of all time. Embraceable You was written in 1928 and published in 1930 in the Broadway musical Girl Crazy, debuted by Ginger Rogers with choreography by Fred Astaire. Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off was written for the 1937 film Shall We Dance, which also featured Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in a duet dance on rollerskates.