Kentish Express Ashford & District
Jazz stars team up for Gershwin tribute night
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A tribute to the legendary composer George Gershwin is being performed at Revelation St Mary’s later this month.
The show is called S’wonderful: Gershwin and Friends.
From Broadway to the opera house, jazz bars to concert halls, Gershwin’s genius was unstoppable.
Now people in Ashford are being offered the chance to enjoy his work in this one-off show at St Mary’s Church in the town centre.
Join jazz sensations Kit Downes and Alice Zawadzki and Revelation’s own Matthew Sharp for an evening of some of the greatest songs ever written.
Matthew worked with Mercurynominated pianist and composer Kit Downes at the Manchester International Jazz Festival and with singer Alice Zawadzki at Camden’s The Forge, and fell in love with their musicianship and fearless sense of adventure.
And it turns out, they all have a crush on Gershwin – hence S’Wonderful, which brings them together for the first time.
The audience is promised an evening of fascinating rhythm and soul-searching melodies as three of the UK’s most inventive musicians get under the skin of Gershwin’s timeless songs, with everything from Embraceable You to Porgy and Bess to the Three Preludes.
The show is on Wednesday, May 25, from 7.45pm to 9.30pm (doors open 7pm). Admission is £10 in advance (£15 on the door).
Gershwin, who died in 1937, was an American composer and pianist who spanned popular and classical genres.
He began his career as a song plugger, but soon started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother Ira Gershwin and Buddy DeSylva.
After a spell in Paris he returned to New York, where he wrote the opera Porgy and Bess with Ira and the author DuBose Heyward.
Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the 20th.
Gershwin later moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death from a brain tumour.
To book tickets or for more information, visit http://revelationstmarys.co.uk