George Gershwin's music is a glittering jewel from the most colorful era of American popular music  — Tin Pan Alley in the early 20th century — when popular music first became big business. Publishing houses produced new songs at an unprecedented rate. Musical theater thrived with shows that would become classics. And homes were filled with the sounds of ragtime, romantic ballads, patriotic tunes, comedy and more emanating from phonographs, radios and individual pianists. Supremely talented composers including Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern flourished as they fueled the incredible Tin Pan Alley music production engine.

The Great Gershwin! concert show with the New England Brass and pianist extraordinaire George Lopez reinvigorates a broad range of Gershwin's most important compositions and brings the milieu in which he thrived to life. Audiences of all ages, whether newly discovering Gershwin or renewing their affinity, will delight in a program that covers Gershwin's best and most interesting work. From the song he submitted to a federal judging panel as a candidate for the National Anthem in 1925, to the iconic American in Paris and beyond, Great Gershwin! captures and holds audiences from start to finish. Superb musicianship from the New England Brass. A remarkable full rendition of Rhapsody in Blue by the sublime George Lopez at the piano. A jazz jam session in the program's second half. This is a chance to book a "S'wonderful" Gershwin 100th anniversary show for a fraction of the cost of a full orchestral presentation. 

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