Jazz Art: Music & Painting- "Rehearsing the Gershwin Songbook"

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"Rehearsing the Gershwin Songbook" Oil on Canvas 54x72” by Marsha Hammel. Private Collection, UK

Jazz singers and musicians gathered in my studio to present a program of George and Ira Gerswin's songbook to an audience of about fifty people.

While the musicians were rehearsing I was making sketches. The resulting composition represented a collaboration of artists working in the present and the past. "Rehearsing the Gershwin Songbook" is a large oil painting that expresses the idea of the RetroForward Project perfectly. That is, the artistry of the past inspiring the new artistry of the present and the future.

Many thanks to Elise Irby Pratt, Terry Neal, Steve Cohen and Lenore Thom. Great fun; lets do it again!