This day in music history.

February 12, 1924, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue premieres in New York. George agreed to write a jazz concerto for Paul Whiteman's latest program entitled "An Experiment in Modern Music". The song was played second to last on the program and the audience gave "Rhapsody in Blue" a standing ovation. This piece has gone on to become a standard in American music. He only had a few weeks to write it before the performance, most of the piece was composed (in his head) on a train journey to Boston , George later wrote
-" It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattly-bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer. I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise... And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance." -