"The Girl Gershwin"
1909 - 1987

My Silent Love

Dana Suesse stood tall between the pillars of European classical tradition and the new art form of Jazz. Born Nadine Dana Suesse in 1909 in Kansas City, her talent blazed early, holding her first concert at the age of nine. Soon she was touring through the Midwest and improvising piano pieces for each show -- a regular vaudeville Mozart. She would enchant the audience by asking them to suggest a theme from which she would spontaneously compose a classical refrain.

In 1926 she moved to New York City with her mother in order to be able to study piano with Alexander Siloti, one of the four surviving pupils of Franz Liszt. Exposed in New York to an emerging jazz idiom, she hungrily studied composition with one of George Gershwin's teachers, Rubin Goldmark, and began what would be a lifetime habit of pouring out compositions at a breakneck pace. She was known to compose sitting up in her bed, sheets of music dropping down in a veritable waterfall of musical output. This early work happily careened between classical music and songs influenced by the jazz sound that was spilling out all over New York City.

Click to read the full bio of Dana Suesse...

Various Artists: The Night is Young: Concert Music of Dana Suesse - Premier Recordings PRCD 1055
Artists include Cy Coleman, Robert Barlow, All City Choir & the American Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Frederick Fennell Liner Notes: Peter Mintun

Keyboard Wizards of the Gershwin Era volume II: Dana Suesse - Pearl Pavilion Records LTD.

"The Night is Young and You're So Beautiful" - Vic Damone, Frank Sinatra, both had wonderful versions, and don't forget 'Men In Tights'.

"My Silent Love" - Peggy Lee ('Mink Jazz"), Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra, ("Blowing the Blues Away"), Charles Brown ("Snuff Drippin' Mama") George Shearing ("As Requested")

A new CD is expected out in late 2009 by Sara Davis Buechner - "The Collected Piano Compositions of Dana Suesse" Koch International Label notes by Peter Mintun.

"Yours for A Song: Women of Tin Pan Alley" - American Masters 1999. (DVD).

Pretty fun clip of Ms Suesse on youtube. A rare clip of Ms. Suesse with Edward Heyman