Market with Apple Music

January 18, 2024 at PST

Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined

February 12, 1924 was a landmark day for classical music. Bandleader Paul Whiteman had organized a concert at New York’s Aeolian Hall called “An Experiment in Modern Music” to prove that jazz could at least be taken as a serious artform by classical audiences. The program of 23 items was packed with bland arrangements of popular tunes, and might well have flopped had it not been for the penultimate number: George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for piano and jazz band. As soon as the famous clarinet glissando began to soar aloft (improvised in rehearsal and given the green light by the composer), audience members, who had started to leave, returned to their seats to watch the full drama unfold. Led by Gershwin at the piano, the performance was dizzying, exuberant, and energetic, and changed classical music forever.

Almost exactly a century on, Rhapsody in Blue still captivates with its grand showtunes, colorful orchestration, and virtuosic piano writing. Inevitably, following the publication of Ferde Grofé’s full-orchestra arrangement alongside a through-written piano part, performances have tended to adhere closely to the score. But for American pianist Lara Downes, Rhapsody in Blue’s improvisatory, free-wheeling nature opened the doors for a new version—one that respected the original score, but which also updated some of its soundscapes to resonate with the here and now. After all, Gershwin referred to his piece as a “kaleidoscope of America,” as Downes explains to Apple Music Classical. “What I always think about is what Gershwin intended, and what he was trying to capture,” she says. “For me, it’s interesting to see the ways in which that is very different 100 years later, but also the ways in which this country is not that different at all. So, it was a question of trying to illustrate his time and our time rolled into one.”

To bring this sense of nowness to Gershwin’s music, Downes approached Puerto Rican composer Edmar Colón for a new arrangement that reverberated with the sounds of today—yet one that was still firmly Gershwin. Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined features musicians from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra, and celebrates the global cultures that are now such a major part of America, from the Jamaican rhythms of Downes’ heritage to the dances of Colón’s South America. Colón retains the spirit of the 1924 performance with an orchestral scoring that’s distinctly “big band” while he intersperses Gershwin’s music with passages of entirely new music that symbolizes 21st-century America.

There are flashes of Middle Eastern music and nods to Jewish klezmer. And halfway through, a Chinese ensemble starts to play, blending traditional music with the themes from Rhapsody in Blue. “Because the premiere of this version took place in San Francisco,” says Downes, “that’s also the place where we harnessed this traditional Chinese instrument ensemble, because that immigration story is so important in San Francisco.” When Downes tours the work, she explains, the Chinese sounds will be replaced with music from wherever she’s performing. “The idea is that if we’re in Austin, Texas, there’ll be a bluegrass ensemble in that moment.”

So, has Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined altered Downes’ view of Gershwin’s 1924 work? “I think that I just have a different relationship with the piece now,” she admits. “When I’m playing it, I never feel like I’m dusting off a warhorse, but I’m also very aware that the audience might be sitting down with the expectation of hearing something that they already know. But I think, yes, just bringing this deeper level of understanding, the piece will change for me.”

This EP features a bonus track, Edmar Colón’s blend of Gershwin and Chopin, Study in Blue, for soprano sax and piano. “When Edmar and I got together to really start working on the Rhapsody project,” says Downes, “we were just starting to go through the score, and we got to that section with that big, slow theme. And EEdmar said, ‘Oh, that’s like that Chopin, it’s like the “Tristesse” Etude [Op. 10 No. 3].’ We were laughing that Gershwin had stolen it, and then we realized how beautifully those two melodies interlink.” For Downes, Study in Blue is yet another way of connecting eras, of showing just how much we all have in common, despite the centuries that separate us.

3 Tracks

April 21, 2022 at PDT

Mason Bates: Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra

How do you describe the epic sweep of Beethoven’s symphonies or the awe-inspiring sunrise in Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé? What happens when 80 musicians get together to breathe life into a composer’s vision? In many ways, orchestral music is impossible to define, the whole infinitely more magical than the sum of its parts. But explaining what goes on underneath the orchestral hood is arguably crucial to helping new generations discover classical music’s marvels.

Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra sets out to do just that. Featuring an exhilarating score by US composer Mason Bates, Philharmonia Fantastique takes us through each section of the orchestra in the company of a magical Sprite who flies into its instruments’ inner workings, peeking inside a flute or falling into the bowels of a cello (“a curious, mercurial superhero—a little badass!” adds Bates). Astonishing animation gives the music its wings, guided by Jim Capobianco, whose credits include Pixar’s 2007 animated movie Ratatouille.

Bates’ music, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Edwin Outwater, is full of ingenuity, exquisite orchestrations, and instant appeal. But it joins a small band—there are few composers who have successfully crafted music for educational purposes. In his 1936 “symphonic fairy tale” Peter and the Wolf, Prokofiev used characters to introduce children to various instruments, and not long after, in 1945, Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, written in response to a UK government appeal for music education films, revealed sectional colors and textures in a set of variations on a theme by Purcell.

For Bates, it was time for a different way to explore the orchestra. “I was thinking that we needed a new guide,” he tells Apple Music, “and I felt that there was an interesting angle we could explore, which was the making of the orchestra. How these instruments work. A creative technology angle. Maybe that’s influenced by the fact that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and am interested in how technology can be used in creative ways. After all, I wrote an opera about Steve Jobs!”

One of Bates’ concerns was that the film should stay the course—Disney’s animated movie Fantasia, which brought Stravinsky, Bach, and Beethoven to young children, is a product of its time, while Britten’s Young Person’s Guide is played today as purely a concert piece. To solve this problem, Capobianco decided that Philharmonia Fantastique’s animation should adopt a dynamic 1950s feel. “Jim knew we wanted something that not only lasted, but that would work for audiences used to $200 million animation budgets,” says Bates. “He suggested something informed by the flat textural world of mid-century French animation.”

Bates’ score plays with this vintage world and propels the action with music of startling variety. Henry Mancini-esque jazz lends the woodwind a mysteriousness, while Hollywood fanfares give a luster to the brass. Percussion instruments from xylophone to timpani explode in virtuosic flurries. Each section is rendered differently. But, says Bates, “By creating different, memorable themes, I wanted to have this dramatic tension towards the end that would bring them together.” In the final minutes, the Sprite spies a new possibility. Instruments and sections are not meant to exist in isolation but in glorious harmony. Strings and percussion exchange rhythms, woodwind and brass mirror each other, and the orchestra starts to gel. Our Sprite realizes that it’s not just exploring music—it is music.

Bates hopes that the film will resonate with children and adults of all ages. “We’re always trying to find ways to excite everyone about this Eighth Wonder of the World,” he says. “The orchestra is this phenomenal real-time collaboration of all these technologies. And I felt that to do that in a way that was exuberant and entertaining was the way to go. I want to engage people and remind them just how cool this medium is.”