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It's Victoria Day weekend in Canada, so we thought it appropriate to have a song from His Majesty's northernmost realm. And does it get any more Canadian than... I like New York in June How About You? Yes, indeed. That's a sufficiently Canadian song to be in the Canadian Songwriters' Hall of Fame, for reasons Mark will get to, eventually. In this Serenade Radio edition of his Song of the Week, Steyn talks to the composer of "How About You?", Burton Lane, and explores the origins of its most memorable line, with some of the best recordings across the decades....

As nobody else seems to celebrate Columbus Day, we might as well. So herewith some authentic Columbian music. This essay is adapted from my book A Song For The Season: For a 15th century Italian explorer long out of favor with America's cultural elite, Christopher Columbus sure has a hammerlock on the standard repertoire. Cole Porter put him in the verse to a famous song: As Dorothy Parker once said to her boyfriend 'Fare thee well' As Columbus announced When he knew he was bounced 'It was swell, Isabelle, swell...' In those days (1935) Dorothy Parker was famous for leaving...

In 1976, 16-year-old model Babi Christina Engelhardt embarked on a hidden eight-year affair with the 41–year-old filmmaker that mirrors one of his most famous movies. Now, amid the #MeToo reckoning and Allen’s personal scandals, she looks back with mixed emotions on their relationship and its unequal dynamic. Sixteen, emerald-eyed, blond, an aspiring model with a confident streak and a painful past: Babi Christina Engelhardt had just caught Woody Allen's gaze at legendary New York City power restaurant Elaine's. It was October 1976, and when Engelhardt returned from the ladies' room, she dropped a note on his table with her phone...

For 70 years or so, Alan Gershwin insisted he was George Gershwin’s long-lost son. And with his death on Feb. 27 at 91 in a Bronx hospital, the curtain came down on what was surely the Gershwins’ most bizarre show ever, revolving around whether this affable but monomaniacal man was one of the greatest victims in American musical history, or a grifter running a long-term con, or someone suffering decades of delusion.

Savoy Orpheans “Fascinating Rhythm” Song by George & Ira Gershwin From the show "Lady Be Good!" Recorded 1926

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Most Dissonant EndingRoseMarie youtube.com/watch?v=tBuzxwbfM-c&feature=youtu.be“Cadence” is something we all recognized in harmony, a kind of “Amen” that signifies completion and finality at the end of a musical phrase. This movie, 1936's “Rose Marie” with Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald, has a completely dissonant, unresolved cadence.

"When Rhapsody in Blue premiered at New York's Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924, most people couldn't wait for the evening to be over. The piece was scheduled near the end of a long program called "An Experiment in Modern Music." After two sluggish hours, the audience was bored, restless, and drenched in sweat due to the hall's broken ventilation system. But then, a lone clarinet pierced through the orchestra, fizzing upward like a fountain of champagne. Suddenly, everyone was riveted. For the next 17 minutes, George Gershwin, an unknown 26-year-old composer, caressed and pounded the piano at center stage,...

There’s a spanking new version of “Porgy and Bess” on the way, one that seeks to transform the classic 1935 opera into a commercial Broadway musical. To that end, the director Diane Paulus and the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks have added new scenes, punched up some dialogue, invented biographical details and — most radically — added a more upbeat ending. Such tinkering with the iconic Gershwin work was bound to draw fire from some quarters, and indeed it has, following the publication of an Arts & Leisure article by Patrick Healy about the production, which stars Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis....

In 2004, Brian Wilson scored a critical and commercial victory by releasing a completed version of "Smile," the legendary "Pet Sounds" follow-up he'd originally begun work on in 1966. Six years later, the Beach Boys mastermind is reaching even further back in time for his latest project, "Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin," due Aug. 17 from Walt Disney Records. "When I was 2 years old, my mom would play 'Rhapsody in Blue' for me, and I just loved that song," he says while relaxing at his home in Beverly Hills. Wilson, 68, singles out George Gershwin's orchestral-jazz classic as one of...

Brian Wilson has been given the go-ahead to finish writing incomplete music by George Gershwin. The Beach Boys mainman will be given full access to the compositions by Gershwin's estate, and will release the music on a forthcoming album of Gershwin covers. Though the album has no fixed release date, it will come out on Walt Disney imprint Disney Pearl, whom Wilson has recently signed a deal with, reports The Wall Street Journal. Speaking about the album, Wilson said he has always loved the music of Gershwin, who died in 1937. "The earliest music I remember hearing is 'Rhapsody In...

OSLO – Anne Wiggins Brown, the African-American soprano who starred as the original Bess in George Gershwin's landmark folk opera "Porgy and Bess" but saw her career limited by racial discrimination, has died at age 96. "Porgy and Bess," first performed in 1935, was based on DuBose Heyward's novel "Porgy" about a crippled beggar in love with Bess and living in the fictional Catfish Row slum in Charleston, South Carolina. It was a rare look in its time at the lives of some African-Americans and has since become a popular opera standard. Brown died Friday in Oslo, where she had...