Program Notes

Porgy and Bess Selections

George Gershwin, composer

Robert Russell Bennett, arranger

Porgy and Bess Selections contains seven songs from Gershwin’s folk opera, Porgy and Bess, which climaxed Gershwin’s spectacular career. Porgy and Bess has been criticized as being between serious opera and musical comedy, but the beauty of the music and the expressive content which is so right for the occasion, has an immediate and complete appeal. This arrangement by Robert Russell Bennett includes: “Summertime,” “A Woman Is a Sometime Thing,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin,” “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “Picnic Parade,” and “Oh Lawd, I’m on My Way.”

—Band Music Notes

George Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess was first performed by the Theater Guild in Boston and New York in 1935 and its revival in 1942 enjoyed the longest run of any revival in Broadway musical history at that time. Selections from Porgy and Bess for Concert Band was arranged by master musical theater arranger and American composer Robert Russell Bennett. Bennett is credited with creating the “Broadway sound” recognized throughout the world, orchestrating over 200 Broadway shows spanning three decades.

—JRO

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