George Gershwin

George Gershwin left school in his mid-teens to work as a song plugger on New York's Tin Pan Alley, hammering out new tunes at the piano for sheet-music customers. Born in Brooklyn in 1898 to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, he was soon writing his own songs, and with his brother Ira as lyricist he turned out one Broadway hit after another.

What set him apart was the itch to carry that jazz-age language into the concert hall. Rhapsody in Blue, dashed off in a few weeks for a 1924 concert, made the case overnight, and he kept going: a piano concerto, orchestral works, and the opera Porgy and Bess. He was still full of plans when he died of a brain tumor in Hollywood in 1937, at 38.

Rhapsody in Blue is the obvious and correct starting point, from its opening clarinet slide onward. Then take the walking tour of An American in Paris, complete with honking taxi horns.