DICK HYMAN: THE GERSHWIN SONGBOOK - JAZZ VARIATIONS

HYMAN GERSHWIN VARIATIONS LINER NOTES

"Playing my songs as frequently as I do at private parties," George Gershwin wrote in 1932, at age 34, "I have naturally been led to compose numerous variations upon them, and to indulge the desire for complication and variety that every composer feels when he manipulates the same material over and over again." By all accounts, Gershwin played his own songs brilliantly; the few recordings he made bear this out. Keeping his melodies clearly audible, he added rhythmic, harmonic and contrapuntal embellishments and devices that turned the songs into virtuoso piano pieces. Fortunately, Gershwin notated variations on eighteen of his songs, most of them classics, in a songbook published by Simon and Schuster in 1932. By then Gershwin was world-renowned as the composer of Rhapsody in Blue, Concerto in F, and An American in Paris, as well as hundreds of songs for musical comedies with lyrics by his brother Ira. Like other great jazz pianists since Gershwin's time, Dick Hyman has improvised throughout his career on many of Gershwin's standards. For this recording, Hyman, perhaps the most eclectic pianist on the scene today, has taken a unique approach: he plays each of Gershwin's tiny gems as written. He then uses the complex Songbook transcriptions, rather han the simpler sheet music, as the basis for improvisation. This is indeed a landmark album.