Jerome Kern

“Show Boat”: Excerpts from Kern and Hammerstein’s Groundbreaking Musical

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When Show Boat opened at New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927, it marked a revolutionary moment in the American musical theater. Audiences were confronted with a new kind of work which was neither a frothy operetta, nor a loosely constructed Jazz Age musical comedy. The Musical Play was born, with its serious, dramatic themes, and integration of music and dialogue. An entry in The Complete Book of Light Opera includes this description: Here …

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Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are,” Leon Fleisher

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In January we explored Jerome Kern’s extraordinary 1939 ballad, All the Things You Are. It’s one of the most beautiful and harmonically sophisticated songs to come out of the Broadway theater. Allusive and dreamy, it’s a melody which floats from one key to another, taking a magical journey part way around the circle of fifths through a series of continuous modulations. The late Leon Fleisher included his version of All the Things You Are on a 2014 Grammy nominated …

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Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are”: A Celebration of Modulation

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Jerome Kern, one of the greatest composers of the American musical theater, was born on this date 135 years ago on January 27, 1885. Kern wrote over 700 songs, including Ol’ Man River and Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man, (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) from the landmark 1927 musical, Show Boat, Long Ago (And Far Away) (lyrics by Ira Gershwin), A Fine Romance (lyrics by Dorothy Fields), and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (lyrics by Otto …

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