Ragtime, Vocal Selections [Paperback] Review

I had an urge to play some Ragtime tunes on my piano, so I bought thisbook and began to play.It has the vocal selections along with the sheetmusic.I find that the sheet music consists of many many chords, making itmore difficult, but it's still great fun to play and sing!Great forauditions!
Ragtime has awesome music, and though not all of the bestsongs are in this, most of them are.My favorite song from Ragtime isWheels of a Dream, and I was SO happy to see it in here.
One thing Ienjoyed about the Ragtime music book was that it wasn't chopped up.When Isay that, I mean from experience with other piano books.Many books withchop up the song like from movies for instance.The songs are translatedand arranged horribly, but I loved that since a lot of the music from themusical was in piano solo, the music plays EXACTLY the same as you would'veheard on Broadway!
Overall, each song is wonderful and this music is anabsolute delight to play!Enjoy!

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Product Description:
Titles are: Back to Before * Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc. * Gliding * Goodbye, My Love * Make Them Hear You * New Music * Our Children * Ragtime * Sarah Brown Eyes * Till We Reach That Day * Wheels of a Dream * Your Daddy's Son.

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George Gershwin: A New Biography [Hardcover] Review

I ordered this book because I've always liked Gershwin's music & happened to catch the last part of the film Rhapsody in Blue on Turner Movie Classics recently. The book does an adequate job of covering Gershwin's composing career, and indeed most of the chapters are titled according to the major composition discussed. If one is looking for in-depth information about Gershwin himself, his relationships, his family & his interests & activities outside music, the book is less satisfying. For example, one might assume from reading this book that his younger brother Arthur died in infancy as he is not mentioned except for his birthdate. Arthur actually lived to an old age, married, had kids & composed music himself. What relationship he & George had is unknown. Similarly, while Ira's wife Leonore had a part in George's life, she appears haphazardly throughout the book and little about her relationship with George is explored. George was also a painter but that is only tangentially mentioned. There is so much more that could fill out a broader, more in-depth picture of Gershwin. One could also wish for better editing to remove grammar errors & smooth out the repetitious use of some phrases as well as the jerky transitions from one subject to the next. The author's extensive research is evident & the endnotes at each chapter useful. For someone interested in Gershwin's growth as a composer, the book does a creditable job of documenting the major compositions & music events in the composer's life. For more about the man himself, readers must look elsewhere.

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The Ultimate Broadway Fake Book [Plastic Comb] Review

This is a good buy for a pro pianist like me who might get requests for tunes I've never heard of from shows I've never seen. It has three indexes: by tune, by show, and by composers and lyricists.

One of the best things in the book is an alphabetical show-by-show synopsis, containing information about each show's history, its major personnel, and its plot.

However -- and it's a BIG however; in fact, several howevers: an awful lot of the songs are second-rate and I can't imagine getting requests for them, or even wanting to play them myself.

The bookproclaims its inclusion of "great songs" from several more recent shows such as "Rent"; gimme a break -- these songs are barely listenable, much less "great."

Throughout the book, many of the chord changes are incorrect (this is a musician's constant complaint about ALL fake books).

Most of the songs do not include the verse (and for Rodgers & Hart, Gershwin, and Kern these are often essential parts of the song). And there are inexplicable omissions.

For example: (1) Some of the included shows are lacking some of their best songs: "The Nervous Set" omits "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," "Finian's Rainbow" omits "Necessity." "The Merry Widow" omits "The Merry Widow Waltz." "Mack and Mabel" omits "I Promise You a Happy Ending." (2) Some excellent shows are missing altogether. No "L'il Abner." No Cy Coleman's "I Love My Wife." And Leonard Bernstein is represented only by two songs from "Wonderful Town"; no "Candide," no "On the Town," no "West Side Story."

And of course there are many songs I already own in other collections, although the book is useful as a one-stop source for all of these, and there are about fifty to a hundred decent to superb songs that I own nowhere else.

There is ample representation of Rodgers & Hart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kern, Gershwin, Porter, Frank Loesser, Jerry Herman, Harold Arlen, Lerner & Loewe, Andrew Lloyd Webber, et al.

In the end, despite its flaws, to me the book was well worth the price.

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Product Description:
Over 720 songs from over 240 Broadway shows! Recently revised to include hits from Martin Guerre, Rent, Smokey Joe's Cafe, Sunset Boulevard, Victor/Victoria, and more! This is the definitive collection of Broadway music, featuring: * Song title index * Show title index * Composer and lyricist index * Synopses of each show. Song highlights include: Ain't Misbehavin' * All I Ask of You * Another Op'nin' Another Show * As Long As He Needs Me * At The Ballet * Bali Ha'i * Beauty and the Beast * Bewitched * Cabaret * Camelot * Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man * Castle on a Cloud * Consider Yourself * Dance: Ten, Looks: Three * Day by Day * Do-Re-Mi * Don't Cry for Me Argentina * Down in the Depths (On the Ninetieth Floor) * Edelweiss * Everything's Coming Up Roses * Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye * Getting to Know You * Give My Regards to Broadway * Hello, Dolly! * How Are Things in Glocca Morra * How High the Moon * I Don't Know How to Love Him * I Dreamed a Dream * If I Can't Love Her * If I Were a Man * If I Were a Rich Man * (I'm a) Yankee Doodle Dandy * The Impossible Dream * The Lady Is a Tramp * Last Night of the World * Love Changes Everything * The Music of the Night * Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' * Oklahoma * Ol' Man River * On My Own * Only You * People * The Rain in Spain * Seasons of Love * Send in the Clowns * The Sound of Music * Starlight Express * Tell Me on a Sunday * Tell Me to Go * Tomorrow * Unexpected Song * Waitin' for the Light to Shine * What I Did for Love * With One Look * You'll Never Walk Alone * more!

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George Gershwin: His Life and Work [Hardcover] Review

Gershwin buffs, run, don't walk to get this book. Pollack has written the definitive study of both "The Life" and "The Work," as per his two fat sections.

Pollack's book is, for one, the first Gershwin bio that takes advantage of the discovery of mountains of original orchestra parts for Golden Age musical theatre scores in a Secaucus warehouse in the early eighties. As such, Pollack analyzes Gershwin's theatre scores closely just as classical music scholars can attend to Mozart or Haydn's works.

Earlier bios could only address the scores largely on the basis of the songs from each score that happened to be published as sheet music, with only a handful of the scores then existing as full piano-vocal scores or as latter-day abridged and heavily adapted recordings. But over the past two decades, most of Gershwin's significant scores have been recorded in full from the discovered materials, such that via these recordings as well as examining the original materials himself, Pollack can address the work as it was presented when it was new, i.e. chorus numbers, character songs not published as sheets, incidental music, etc. Given that musicals constituted the bulk of Gershwin's output in his short life, this alone makes Pollack's book invaluable.

In addition, some Gershwin bios have been written by people focused on pulling him down, devoted to revealing him as an undereducated, boorish parvenu (i.e. the ones by Charles Schwartz and Joan Peyser). Pollack's sleuthing and interviews conclusively demonstrate that these evaluations were incorrect: Gershwin pursued serious musical training throughout his life, it shows in his work, and socially, he was a beloved, charming person who was deeply mourned at his death.

Pollack has truly done his homework, such that just about any question one might have about Gershwin is exhaustively answered. For each show he chronicles not only the score and its critical reception in New York, but also its London and even Australian versions if there were any, all of the revivals across the US, and its recordings -- and he does this even starting with the obscure early efforts. He is equally thorough re Gershwin's concert music.

It should be said that those seeking further engagement with the raison d'etre of Joan Peyser's THE MEMORY OF ALL THAT, the story that Gershwin fathered a love child with a chorus girl and paid him and his mother off to keep it quiet, will not be satisfied. Pollack briefly addresses objections to that thesis from some quarters since Peyser's book was published -- but, in my view, neglects the rather damning facts that 1) said love child looks exactly like Gershwin and 2)was supported in his claim to have made regular visits to Gershwin's apartment by none other than Gershwin's valet. As such, one must consult various sources pre- and post-Peyser to come to conclusions about that issue. One suspects that Pollack, having been granted interviews from surviving keepers of the Gershwin flame, opted on that particular subject to step around giving offense. He is not to be faulted for this.

It should also be said, however, that inevitably of a work so dazzlingly complete, this book is not one most people would want to read from front to back. It is, in its way, a reference book set in prose. There are times when Pollack seems almost obsessive -- such as bringing vast study to bear upon locating the purchase by Gershwin's parents of a piano in precisely late 1910, or letting us know (based on a chance message from abroad) that OH, KAY played in translation in Sweden, or informing us via close examination of the original arrangement of RHAPSODY IN BLUE -- not later arrangements, but the original one, mind you -- that one player doubled on bass and tuba.

But this degree of obsession is what real scholarship is, and though for most it will be a book to jump around in than to read page for page, Pollack has given us an authoritative masterpiece. I am in awe of the man, and happy to have this one on my shelves forever.

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