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Brian Wilson’s Gershwin Project
10.08.2009
04:18 pm
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With Smile more or less put to bed, Brian Wilson can now move on to completing the work of another American master.  As today’s LA Times reports:

Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson has been authorized by the estate of George Gershwin to complete unfinished songs Gershwin left behind when he died in 1937.

He plans to finish and record at least two such pieces on an album of Gershwin music he hopes to release next year.  The Gershwin-Wilson project may strike some as an odd coupling: one New York musician famous for sophisticated 1920s and ‘30s pop songs including ” ‘S Wonderful” and “Someone to Watch Over Me” as well as such expansive, classically minded compositions as “Rhapsody”; the other the driving force behind Southern California beach culture hits such as “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “I Get Around” and “California Girls.”

But their career paths and evolution of their artistry have common threads, noted people involved with the project and some independent scholars, and that gives the proposed collaboration logic.  Todd Gershwin, George’s great-nephew and a trustee of the George Gershwin family trusts, said, “George for his time was a visionary.  He certainly crossed genres and musical lines, tried things that hadn’t been done before and Brian Wilson has done exactly the same thing.”  For his part, Wilson, 67, described himself Tuesday as “thrilled to death.”

To see what Wilson’s up against, the following clip shows Gershwin himself pounding out I Got Rhythm.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds: