New Iowa Deanery Series Focuses on Glory of “Rhapsody in Blue”
The legendary composer/pianist George Gershwin was just 25 when he wrote and premiered his “Rhapsody in Blue” in New York City, Feb. 12, 1924. Just three months later, Gershwin and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra took the groundbreaking concerto (which spanned jazz and classical genres) to Davenport as part of an 18-city national tour.
Gates Thomas, director of The Deanery School of Music, 1103 Main St., Davenport, will discuss “Rhapsody in Blue” in a multimedia presentation Monday, June 30, as part of a new “Time Capsule” lecture series.
Himself a composer/arranger and music director at Davenport’s Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Thomas became part-time Deanery director Oct. 30, 2024, and did his first “Time Capsule” presentation in February on Louis Armstrong.
Planned for the last Monday of each month (there was not one Memorial Day), Thomas also has done talks on conductor Leopold Stokowski, and orchestral works of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
The next presentation in the “Time Capsule” multimedia music series will be on the 1924 premiere of George Gershwin’s landmark “Rhapsody in Blue” on Monday, June 30, 2025.
The title of his June 30 talk (5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., preceded by a wine and cheese reception at 5 p.m.) is “A Gorgeous Piece of Impudence,” which comes from the New York Times review of the “Rhapsody in Blue” premiere, among a longer program of modern music.
“He was the first serious composer to write in a popular aesthetic,” Thomas said recently of Gershwin (1898-1937). “It causes challenges for musicians because he’s writing in a brand-new idiom, having to invent notation, struggling to find a way to notate his ideas.”
“He struggled with the language and the overall approach to popular music and jazz,” he said. “Gershwin’s symphonic music has always been really problematic.”
As was typical of the period, Gershwin was juggling several projects in the months leading to the “Rhapsody” premiere.
“Part of the hurry, he was working on a show, in Boston, ‘The Perfect Lady,’ which opened in New York as ‘Sweet Little Devil,’” Thomas said. The composer was traveling back and forth between Boston and New York, where “Sweet Little Devil” opened Jan. 21, 1924.
He essentially penned a two-piano score for “Rhapsody in Blue” between November and January, and composer Ferde Grofe was asked to orchestrate the second piano part for the Whiteman orchestra, simply because Gershwin didn’t have time, not due to any lack of ability, Thomas said.
Gershwin was working on “Sweet Little Devil” when he was reminded by a newspaper article in the New York Herald that Whiteman was expecting him to create a “jazz concerto” for his “Experiment in Modern Music” at Aeolian Hall on Feb. 12, 1924. Juggling multiple projects was in Gershwin’s blood, according to the show’s page on Gershwin.com.
Like many pianists, Thomas (now in his late 50s) grew up playing Gershwin, including the Three Preludes and “Rhapsody in Blue” as a young teenager.
Gates Thomas is a composer/arranger, music director at Davenport’s Unitarian Church, and the new director of The Deanery School of Music in Davenport.
The 1924 Whiteman orchestra had just 23 musicians, and many played multiple instruments during that concert, Thomas said.
“The clarinetist played 10 instruments, all the musicians doubled,” he said. “A string bass player played the tuba, a violinist played accordion.”
“To write for the Whiteman orchestra, you have to write for the people, what they can do,” Thomas said. “Gershwin knew the musicians, knew what they could do.”
The New York Times review by Olin Downes is very famous, but the line about “impudence” actually referred to an earlier piece in the program, a jazz song called “Livery Stable Blues,” and Whiteman had the musicians play it in an older, more authentic style, “very homely,” Thomas said.
“Whiteman wanted to show how far jazz had come; he was a little horrified that the audience reacted to it so enthusiastically,” he said.
“Livery Stable Blues” was “introduced apologetically as an example of the depraved past from which modern jazz has risen,” Downes wrote in his 1924 review. “The apology is herewith indignantly rejected, for this is a gorgeous piece of impudence, much better in its unbuttoned jocosity and Rabelasian laughter than other and more polite compositions that came later.”
Of Gershwin’s groundbreaking piece, the review said:
“This composition shows extraordinary talent, just as it also shows a young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk, struggling with a form of which he is far from being master.
“There was tumultuous applause for Mr. Gershwin’s composition,” Downes wrote. “There was realization of the irresistible vitality and genuineness of much of the music heard on this occasion, as opposed to the pitiful sterility of the average production of the ‘serious’ American composer.”
Thomas thought the “glorious piece of impudence” equally applied to Gershwin himself – his personality and his music. “I thought it was great quote, that captured so much about the piece, the man,” he said.
Gershwin and Whiteman took the “Rhapsody” on tour starting May 14, 1924, to Rochester, N.Y., then Buffalo, and moving westward. It included a May 23 concert at the then-relatively new Coliseum (built in 1914) on Davenport’s West 4th Street, later known as The Col Ballroom, which ultimately closed in 2018.
The venues on the 1924 tour were packed, contrary to a later Quad-City Times column by Bill Wundram, Thomas said. “Whiteman was already a household name, undoubtedly the biggest name in popular music,” he said. Davenport native and beloved jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke later played with the Whiteman orchestra.
The Quad City Symphony Orchestra featured “Rhapsody in Blue” on its April 2025 Masterworks concerts.
The upcoming Deanery presentation (which may be moved to next door Parish Hall at Trinity Cathedral (depending on turnout), will include some piano examples, but will not play the piece in its entirety, Thomas said.
He will tell the story with fascinating video and audio clips, photos, historical documents, and animation.
Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door, with students admitted free with ID. For tickets and more information, visit The Deanery website HERE.
