Kern: Smoke gets in your eyes

Jerome Kern was born in New York City in 1885 and died there in 1945, aged 60. He was one of the most prominent American theatre composers of the 20th century. Like so many of his peers, Kern started his career as a song-plugger for Tin Pan Alley. His first stage successes were in London, writing songs for West End productions. Whilst living in England he met and married his wife. By the 1920s Kern was an established Broadway composer and, although the vast majority of his musicals are now largely forgotten, many of the songs from them remain as popular as ever. Perhaps his greatest contribution to the American musical was Showboat. This one show has assured him a place in the history of the Musical.

Arguably the best-known of all 20th-century composers, George Gershwin's music encompasses with equal skill both the classical and popular genres. He was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn, New York City, in September 1898 to immigrant Jewish parents. He died at the early age of 38 from a tumour in the brain.

Gershwin started to show an interest in music from about the age of ten and, although receiving some piano tutelage, was largely self-taught in composition. It was only later in his career that he received some formal instruction in composition.

Gershwin's first employment was as a song plugger for a New York music publishing company. His first song was published in 1916 and a year later he had his first commercial successes with the rag Rialto Ripples. This was followed, in 1919, by his first big international hit, Swanee. Now established as a successful composer of popular songs, between 1919 and 1933, Gershwin produced, in collaboration with his elder brother Ira, some of the most successful Broadway musicals.

In 1924 he was commissioned by the band leader Paul Whiteman to produce what was to be his first 'serious' composition, the Rhapsody in Blue. This was followed a year later by the Piano Concerto in F and, in 1928, by An American in Paris. His opera Porgy and Bess was first performed on Broadway in 1935.

Arranged for mixed voices by Dennis Keene

This set brings together the five complete recordings of famous Broadway musicals made under the direction of the American conductor and musical theatre archivist John McGlinn – Show Boat (1927) by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (1934), Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon (1947) and Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate (1948). The Show Boat recording also contains a substantial amount of extra material cut from the original production before opening or written for subsequent revivals and the 1936 film.