George Gershwin — composer with roots in the Russian Empire
George Gershwin was born Jacob Gershwine in Brooklyn on 26 September 1898, the second of four children of Moishe Gershowitz and Roza Bruskina, Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire. His mother had been born in St Petersburg. His grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, had worked as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army, service that gave the family the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement. Moishe emigrated to New York in the early 1890s, met Roza there, and married her on 21 July 1895, anglicising his name to Morris Gershwine; George later changed the spelling to Gershwin, and the family followed.
His father ran a string of small businesses and moved the family often within New York. When George was about twelve his parents bought a piano for his elder brother Ira; it was George who played it. He studied with Charles Hambitzer, left school at fifteen and became a song plugger on Tin Pan Alley, demonstrating new songs for a music publisher.
"Swanee" (1919), recorded by Al Jolson, was his first great hit. In 1924 Paul Whiteman's orchestra premiered his Rhapsody in Blue in New York, joining jazz and concert music in a way that made it one of the defining American compositions. It was followed by the Concerto in F (1925) and An American in Paris (1928).
With Ira as lyricist he wrote a series of Broadway musicals, among them Lady, Be Good (1924), Funny Face (1927) and Of Thee I Sing (1931), the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; the prize went to the writers and to Ira, and George received a special posthumous Pulitzer citation in 1998. Their songs include "Fascinating Rhythm", "The Man I Love", "I Got Rhythm" and "Embraceable You".
In 1935 he completed Porgy and Bess, an opera on African-American life in Charleston, which after a mixed reception became one of the most performed American operas, its "Summertime" one of the most recorded songs of the century. He moved to Hollywood to write for films. In 1937 he developed symptoms of a brain tumour, and he died in Los Angeles on 11 July 1937, aged thirty-eight.
"Morris and Rose Gershwine emigrated from Odessa, Russian Empire, to New York City around the 1890s."
Migration storyTracing the roots — St. Petersburg
His parents, Moishe Gershowitz and Roza Bruskina, were Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire; his mother was born in St Petersburg, and his grandfather Jakov Gershowitz had served as a mechanic in the Imperial Russian Army. They emigrated to New York in the early 1890s.
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St. Petersburg. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.