Ryan Banagale, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, Colorado College

Ryan Raul Banagale is an Assistant Professor of music at Colorado College where he offers classes on a range of American music topics, including musical theatre, jazz, popular music, and media studies. A recipient of the American Musicological Society's AMS-50 and Howard Mayer Brown Fellowships, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2011. He currently sits on the editorial board of the George Gershwin Critical Edition and will be editing at least three separate arrangements of Rhapsody in Blue.

"a welcome divergence from most previous work ... offers fresh musical insights and delves into heretofore ignored aspects of the work and its history. Highly recommended." - J. Farrington, CHOICE

"A fascinating exploration of the 'active and, at times, surprising life' of an American musical icon. Saturated in original archival research and musical insights, the book offers a vivid, unique account of the Rhapsody as a 'variable idea and not a fixed text'-a savvy approach that opens up fresh ways of hearing and understanding the piece." - Jeffrey Magee, Associate Professor of Music and Theater at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

"Addressing fascinating but little-noticed source material, Arranging Gershwin advances an original thesis that promises to change the way we think about Rhapsody in Blue in particular and the whole question of classical/nonclassical hybridity in general. Moreover, Banagale accomplishes his goal with an accessible, engaging style that draws in the general reader as well as the specialist." - Larry Hamberlin, Middlebury College, author oTin Pan Opera: Operatic Novelty Songs in the Ragtime Era