Music: Jazz on the Verge

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A little worried at first, Conductor Whiteman wagged his head and shuffled his feet in the fast, hairbrained style of most jazz leaders. Quieting down, he developed the orthodox swoops and pirouettes of a symphony conductor, trying thus to dignify one of the more significant moments of his life. His concert in Philadelphia was an important stage in his fight to make symphony-goers take jazz seriously. With that end in view he offers scholarships to students of nonclassical music, hopes to establish a research centre for them at Williams College. As the first step he is building there a Museum of American Music, has already donated a vast library of records, will give Gershwin's original manuscript of the Rhapsody in Blue and many others, also a big collection of American instruments including a strange gourdlike zeezee such as African slaves brought to the U. S. In December 1933, Whiteman took an orchestra to New York's Metropolitan Opera House. In the summers of 1935 and 1936 he was guest conductor at Philadelphia's Robin Hood Dell. Last week was the first time he had entered the Academy of Music to give one of its regular winter concerts. This week at New York's Hippodrome he was to repeat it for the benefit of his foundation at Williams. Jazz-King Paul Whiteman will scarcely be satisfied until he has a full dress performance in New York's nearly-holy Carnegie Hall, with the Philharmonic.

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