Gershwin later collaborated with his brother, Ira, on hit songs including “I Got Rhythm” and on musical comedies and revues that included Lady Be Good (1924), Funny Face (1927), and Of Thee I Sing (1931), the first musical comedy to win a Pulitzer Prize. Gershwin composed a string of hits in the 1920s and ’30s, writing for musical comedies, but his more serious work started with Rhapsody in Blue, a sweeping blues symphony that was later orchestrated by American composer Ferde Grofe. Gershwin actually composed two versions: one for jazz bands and another for full orchestras.

The symphony influenced other composers to use rhythms and melodies derived from jazz in their work. Gershwin’s other serious works include An American in Paris, written in 1928 and used as a ballet for Gene Kelly, I Got Rhythm, and Someone to Watch Over Me. In 1997, a music scholar studying Gershwin’s original score for Rhapsody in Blue discovered some 24 measures had been cut out by the publisher. The Boston Pops performed the rediscovered version for the first time in 1997. Gershwin’s masterpiece, jazz opera Porgy and Bess, which blends African-American folk music, jazz, Tin Pan Alley, and classical styles, was first performed in 1935. Gershwin died of a brain tumor two years after the opera was first performed, shortly before he turned 39.