Summertime - Festkonzert

Paris! Breathtaking, colourful, fast-paced and full of secrets. Just as it is today as it was 100 years ago, when the young American George Gershwin sat in the cafés of Montmartre, listening to the sounds of the big city and overcome by homesickness for New York, that other dazzling metropolis. In Gershwin’s musical portrait ‘An American in Paris’, the roar of engines, the wail of car horns, the can-can, the Charleston, the blues and ragtime merge into an irresistible symphony of the big city – an auditory journey so vivid and captivating that one might well do without a city break of one’s own. The human soul with all its heights and depths, love, despair, death – and then there’s ‘Summertime’, one of the most covered arias in musical history: the highlights from Gershwin’s opera *Porgy and Bess* transport you into a world of powerful emotions.

Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the Gürzenich Orchestra, together with two magnificent vocal soloists and the Cologne Citizens’ Choir, kick off the new concert season with a burst of swing and jazz.