Vocalist Sue Matthews and pianist Stef Scaggiari join forces to bring an evening of the music of George and Ira Gershwin to the Mainstay in Rock Hall, MD on Saturday June 22 at 8:00 p.m. Admission is $20. For information and reservations call the Mainstay at 410-639-9133. Information is also available at the Mainstay’s website https://www.mainstayrockhall.org.
Sue Matthews and Stef Scaggiari collaborate with a depth and complexity well-suited to the sophisticated collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin. Matthews is a superb singer with a silky smooth voice, an intimate style, flawless delivery, exquisite phrasing and a passion for finding every bit of meaning in the heart of a song. Scaggiari is a brilliant pianist whose emotionally charged lyricism and flawless technique anticipates Matthews’ every interpretive nuance and whose classic brilliance shines on the Gershwin concert piano pieces.
Vocalist Sue Matthews first came to people’s attention in 1991, when she released the traditional jazz album “Love Dances.” She was soon playing clubs and festivals and her next release “When You’re Around,” reached “the top 20 on the Gavin and R & R Jazz charts. Since then she has released a number of recordings and become a favorite throughout the mid-Atlantic jazz clubs, concert halls, jazz festivals and television studios.
She has been a featured artist at the W.C. Handy Music Festival, with the Calgary Philharmonic, the Florida Symphony, the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Showcase in NYC and the Saluzzo Musical Festival in Italy. She has been artist-in-residence at the Clifden Arts Week Festival, County Galway, Ireland and at Augusta Heritage Center and is a two-time recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council individual Artist Award.
Stef Scaggiari is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music with a Masters’ from Peabody. He has deep roots in the classical tradition and a dazzling versatility equally at home with Ellington and Gershwin or Mozart and Rachmaninoff or as a jazz improviser from the Kennedy Center to Carnegie Hall. He is a former member of the U.S. Marine Band (The President’s Own) playing at the White House more than 200 times.
Scaggiari’s career has taken him from Italy to Japan to Brazil. Highlights as both a jazz and classical pianist include the Monterey Jazz Festival, Saluzzo Festival, Baltimore’s Artscape Festival; soloist with the Kansas City Symphony, the Evansville Philarmonic, the Calgary Philharmonic; cross-over classical/jazz concerts with his trio at the Shriver Hall Series (Johns Hopkins), the Strathmore Mansion Series in Rockville, MD, and the Kilbourn Hall Series (Eastman School of Music). He has toured and recorded with such luminaries as the Modern Jazz Quartet, the Count Basie All-Stars and Mel Torme. His list of 30 recordings includes 9 for Concord Records and his name and music is heard by millions every Sunday on National Public Radio’s Week-End Edition.
While George and Ira Gershwin as a songwriting team were rooted in the sounds and style of the Jazz Age, between their musical theatre and film work, the folk opera “Porgy and Bess” and George’s concert piano, their work is timeless and magical.
By the time of their 1924 Broadway hit, “Lady be Good!” George had worked with lyricist Buddy DeSylva on a series of revues and Ira had enjoyed success with composer Vincent Youmans, but from 1924 until George’s death in 1937, the brothers wrote almost exclusively with each other, composing over two dozen scores for Broadway and Hollywood.
Though they had many individual song hits, their greatest achievement may have been the elevation of musical comedy to an American art form. Their classic folk opera, “Porgy and Bess” (co-written with DuBose Heyward), is constantly revived in opera houses and theatres throughout the world. Concurrently with their musical theatre and film work, George attained great success in the concert arena as a piano virtuoso, conductor, and composer of such celebrated works as “Rhapsody in Blue,” “An American in Paris” and “Concerto in F.”
Following George’s death, Ira continued to work in film and theatre with collaborators ranging from Kurt Weill and Jerome Kern to Harold Arlen and Harry Warren, among others, writing such standards as “Long Ago (and Far Away)” and “The Man That Got Away,” each nominated for an Academy Award.
Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Gershwins in 1985 and in 2007, the Library of Congress instituted the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in their honor.
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