News about George Gershwin

Tom Chesshyre experiences Rocky Mountaineer's first US train route, a 370-mile journey between Denver, Colorado, and the town of Moab in Utah. He writes: 'It makes for one of the greatest train rides anywhere on the planet (let alone just the US). And it isn't just the scenery that's appealing. There's a lively camaraderie on board, which might have something to do with the free-flowing drinks in the SilverLeaf Plus lounge, where Fats Waller and George Gershwin tunes play on the automatic piano.'

George Gershwin, the legendary American composer, penned some of the world's most popular songs, from Rhapsody in Blue to The Man I Love. But his appearances in his apartment, though he was barred from his wrists and flogged by his married woman, were something else entirely. He was kicked out of the building due to the terrible sounds of his screams that echoed through the open windows. A show in a Paris brothel in 1923 had a similarly unenthusiastic reaction. Gershwin's friends had arranged to see the Brooklyn-born artiste live on a peephole, but they were less impressed. One of the great man's biographers characterized it remarkably mechanically.' Tough critics are among the many who have weighed in on the campaign.

On Sunday evening, the actors appeared backstage at King Charles' Coronation Concert in Windsor. Lucy Illingworth, 13, the presenter of Channel 4's The Piano, joined Mother Candice on the red carpet ahead of her appearance. The blind musician performed well in a vibrant chiffon frock just months after melting the nation's heart in the competition to find the country's best amateur pianist.

Any musician will have a standing ovation at a packed Royal Festival Hall. And that's just what happened when Lucy, blind and autistic, 13, won The Piano last night, the Channel 4 competition to find the UK's best amateur pianist. With her flawless interpretation of Debussy's Arabesque, the teen from West Yorkshire, who was born with cancerous tumors in her eyes and is largely nonverbal, stunned audiences and many of them fell in tears.

JACI STEPHEN: Bravo's latest reality series Real Girlfriends in Paris premiered last night, with its first two episodes. Any Bravo (and I really am) knows that their reality is as unreal as real life is; I don't want to watch a show about me sitting at a desk all day. Their shows are celebrations of the excesses and insanities of people you'd never want to know in real life: staged arguments, ridiculous plot lines, and characters with EIFFEL TOWER-SIZED egos.