Great Gatsby

In 1924 there occurred an extraordinary coincidence: George Gershwin composed his Rhapsody in Blue and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his third novel The Great Gatsby. Gershwin’s score was bright, tuneful and optimistic. Fitzgerald’s novel was brilliant, funny and sad. Both defined the 1920’s as what Fitzgerald dubbed “The Jazz Age”. I knew and loved both book and music from a very early age. I had an opportunity to express this when in 2019 the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre commissioned a new score for a ballet based on the novel. I wanted this ballet to sound like an expensive Broadway musical of the period: a small group of strings but plenty of saxes, pinging brass and holding it together that jazz beat and the throb of the Blues, but I also had a story to tell and characters to delineate. The novel darts about in time, only gradually revealing Gatsby’s story. In choosing selections for concerts and CD, I chose to mix it up and look for a musical logic. I also wanted to pay tribute to the popular dances of the day: sentimental waltzes, the Argentine tango and Paso Doble, Foxtrots and above all, the Charleston but central to the book is the classic love story of Daisy Fay and Jay Gatsby. What starts as a wartime romance in 1917 ends tragically with their reunion five years later.

A Midwesterner becomes fascinated with his nouveau riche neighbor, who obsesses over his lost love.

Nick Carraway, a Yale University graduate and World War I veteran, is staying in a sanatorium to treat his alcoholism. He talks about a man named Gatsby, describing him as the most hopeful man he had ever met. When he struggles to articulate his thoughts, his doctor, Walter Perkins, suggests writing it down, since writing is Nick's true passion. In the summer…

In the future, the human race has been assimilated by extraterrestrial psychic parasites called "Souls". Melanie Stryder, a human, is captured by a Seeker (Diane Kruger) and infused with a soul called "Wanderer", in order to discover the location of one of the last pockets of non-assimilated humans. Melanie's personality survives the procedure and begins…

Raise your coupe and step into the delicious world of The Great Gatsby with this ineffably entertaining edition of the complete novel featuring food and drink recipes throughout.

Sony Masterworks Broadway is proud to announce the release of the Original Broadway Cast Recording of The Great Gatsby – A New Musical. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s landmark novel, The Great Gatsby stars the Tony Award-nominated Broadway sensations Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada.