Rialto Ripples by George Gershwin for Jazz Band Arranged by Jari Villanueva
Full Score
Clarinet
Alto Sax
Tenor Sax
2 Trumpets
2 Trombones
Violin
Piano
Banjo
Tuba
Drums

SCORE AND PARTS DOWNLOADED UPON PAYMENT

This early Gershwin composition was co-created by George and fellow Remick’s Publishing employee Will Donaldson. “Rialto Ripples” is a ragtime novelty piece written in 1916 and published in 1917, the year Scott Joplin passed away. It wasn't a major hit for Gershwin, although the piano roll version he recorded shows remarkable dexterity and speed for a young man of seventeen.

Having worked at Remick’s music publishing company for two years, “Rialto Ripples” was the first of George’s works that they agreed to publish. After quitting high school at the age of fifteen to work as a song plugger for Remick’s, George spent his workdays sitting at a piano, demonstrating to customers how the sheet music sounded. Through this intensive experience, he was exposed to a wide range of popular songs. He would analyze his favorite songs, like those by Jerome Kern, to understand why they succeeded the way they did.

Not every song was a Kern, though, and after two years at Remick’s, George was growing tired of playing the standard popular songs, which often felt predictable and harmonically dull to him. “It was now that the popular-song racket began to get definitely on my nerves… I was a most unhappy lad at Remick’s.”

This is not George’s first instrumental composition. That honor goes to a Tango from 1914 that is now considered lost.