Severi Pyysalo, composition, vibraphone and programming

“This year it will be 80 years since the death of the genius composer George Gershwin. While someone’s death is hardly anything to celebrate, the fact the Gershwin’s music is alive and well most certainly is. Gershwin’s impact on Western music is immense. It is no exaggeration to say that, without him, popular music as we know it would not exist. He drew influences from European classical composers (particularly Ravel) and early jazz. The same goes for the composer of this piece. Gershwin was known especially as a composer of musicals, but he did also compose “serious” music, for example, the piano concerto Rhapsody in Blue and the opera Porgy and Bess. I would go as far as to say that the biggest credit for the preservation of Gershwin’s music for posterity belongs to jazz musicians, who in the 1930s adopted his tunes for variation and improvisation. This continuum has survived among jazz musicians to this day and will continue to do so.

My composition ODE TO GERSHWIN is a hybrid of a kind. Stylistically it bears no relation to Gershwin’s music, but instead involves experimental soundscapes and improvisation, although one may hear echoes of 1930s musicals if one chooses to do so…I have included a few references to Gershwin’s works and almost the whole of Bess’s aria “I Loves You Porgy” in the work. Gershwin gave voice to the optimistic post-Depression USA, and I hope that this Finnish tribute will not come across as too much of a Nordic funeral march. At least the piece ends on a major chord, which is generally taken as a positive omen…

I hope you enjoy what you are going to hear!”

-Severi Pyysalo