[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, and now let's hear some music from a live event this past Saturday at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park. It was a centennial celebration of two New York City institutions, this very public radio station, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of its first broadcast, but it's also the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Pianist Lara Downes curated an event that examined the themes of the original Rhapsody, a blending of jazz and classical music, a strong sense of place, and gave the Gershwin's work a little update with a new arrangement from composer Edmar Colón that infuses the original song with Latin rhythms and melodic allusions to other musical traditions from around the world.

Producer Simon Close has been on loan from Team Olivet, and he's been working on some of the station's special centennial projects, including this one, as well as the Public Song Project, but before we hear more about the event from Simon, let's listen to some of the music. This is a medley of two iconic songs, both called New York, New York, as in "it's a helluva town. The Bronx is up, but the Battery's down," but also "where you wake up to find you're king of the hill, top of the heap." Here's that from pianist Lara Downes.

[MUSIC - Lara Downes: New York, New York/On the Town]

That was Lara Downes performing a medley of Sinatra's New York, New York, as well as the song On the Town of the same name. Now we'll hear more about the event billed Rhapsody for This Land: The American Odyssey in Music for the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. WNYC producer Simon Close joins us. Hi, Simon.

Simon Close: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: How did you and Lara Downes hatch the idea for the event?

Simon Close: I guess the story goes back to-- I have to give Lara really credit for this event in the first place. Lara was a judge on the Public Song Project in our first year, which was last year. Leading into this year, knowing that it was WNYC's centennial, I was thinking of ways to sort of tie the song project since a lot of the public domain. The work that enters the public domain is from the 1920s right now, trying to tie that into WNYC's own centennial, and I knew that Rhapsody in Blue was also turning 100 this year. Since Lara is a pianist, I reached out to her to see if she might want to be involved again and kind of like broaden her role in it a little bit and brainstorm some way to get Rhapsody in Blue as a central part of this year's Public Song Project.

Luckily, she was way ahead of me and had already commissioned this new version of Rhapsody in Blue, which is called Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined. It was arranged by Edmar Colón, as you mentioned before. She was already working on this piece, and looking for a place for it to perform in New York City, and St. Ann's took it up with Karen Brooks Hopkins as executive producer. We just kept the conversation going, and WNYC got involved to broadcast it. I guess that's how it all came together.

Alison Stewart: There were undertones of civic engagement, a little politics. It was part concert, part voter registration drive, and it took place under the Brooklyn Bridge, right next to St. Ann's Warehouse. First of all, what was it like to hear the music?

Simon Close: Oh, it was beautiful. Yes, so the music was the central piece of the whole event, which lasted about-- The event itself was just under two hours. The Rhapsody in Blue was the kind of headlining act, but the theme of the event was an American Odyssey in Music. It was sort of like music from the last century and maybe even more of US music history. We heard some folk and kind of labor organizing songs, like Woody Guthrie stuff performed by Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal. The classical trio Time for Three did Amazing Grace and some other songs on the themes of kind of joy and grace and humanity.

What else? Arturo O’Farrill, who's been on the show and is also part of the Song Project, he composed a completely new piece called Turtle Island Crossing, which sort of was reflecting on themes of the land that we all stand on and share. Turtle Island is a term that is used by a lot of indigenous cultures. It was partly recognizing that the concert itself was taking place on Lenapehoking, the ancestral and current homeland of the Lenape peoples.

We also heard from Christian McBride, who performed two songs, one from the Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson, and another, A Change is Going to Come by Sam Cooke, both kind of reflecting on democracy and access to the community that we all share. I think you mentioned this in the top, but there was this other angle to the event that was that headcount, the organization that registers voters and checks voter registration, was also there for people to have access to, so that was sort of an undercurrent of a theme to the event also.

Alison Stewart: Well, let's listen to one of the people you mentioned, Christian McBride. This is A Change is Going to Come, live from the concert.

[MUSIC - Christian McBride: A Change is Going to Come]

That's Christian McBride, A Change is Going to Come. We are talking about Rhapsody for This Land: The American Odyssey in Music for the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. You may have heard it here on WNYC. Simon Close, a producer for All Of It, has been helping out the folks with WNYC centennial projects, and this was one of them. We actually get a text that says great concert, inspiring. When George-- Yes, right. When you were thinking about the piece Rhapsody in Blue, and it really sits at the crossroads of jazz and classical music, What was different that we heard in the versions on Saturday?

Simon Close: Well, yes, so I think that's right, that it does sit at the crossroads of jazz and classical. Obviously, Lara or a music historian would be able to speak to this better. It came at a time when jazz was maybe not as accepted in the world of serious classical music as it deserved to be, and so this was a piece that helped usher that in a little more, and so it was drawing from lots of different American music traditions. I think what was really interesting about what Lara and Edmar did with this Reimagined version of it, is that they took that same spirit but updated it for the present. Edmar infused some more kind of Latin rhythms into it and other kind of cultural music traditions that speak to the diversity of the city we live in, the entire country that we live in, and all the different cultures that have influenced the music that we listen to.

Alison Stewart: Simon Close has been working hard on that event and our other centennial celebrations. He'll come back to us one day soon. Simon, thanks for joining us.

Simon Close: Thanks so much, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on an excerpt from the new arrangement of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

[MUSIC - George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue]

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