American composer George Gershwin.

George Gershwin

(1898 - 1937)

Born in Brooklyn to Lithuanian and Russian Jewish parents, George Gershwin and his brother Ira spent much of their youth in New York’s Yiddish Theatre District getting an informal education in music and entertainment. In the midst of a successful songwriting career, Gershwin died of a brain tumor at the age of thirty-eight.

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Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

—George Gershwin, 1933

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