‘I like a Gershwin tune,how about you?’ asks the famous Arthur Freed–Burton Lane song and most listeners would agree emphatically.

There’s something about the music of George Gershwin (especially when coupled with the idiosyncratic lyrics of his brother Ira) that makes it still sound as fresh today as it did when first written. This eclectic collection of twenty numbers takes us through his all-too-brief career and gives us an ample sampling of his genius.

I’ll Build A Stairway To Paradise was written with Buddy DeSylva. Although created as the Act I Finale of George White’s Scandals of 1922, you probably won’t be able to listen to it without remembering that scene from An American In Paris where Georges Guétary sang it climbing a giant staircase, which illuminated step by step as he ascended.

Irving Caesar claims that he and Gershwin wrote Swanee in less than an hour