Dana Suesse
Updated: 5 days ago
In the 1930s and 1940s, Dana Suesse (pronounced “Sweese”) was one of the most celebrated women in American popular music. Her compositions were performed by major orchestras, heard on national radio broadcasts, and enjoyed by audiences across the country. Newspapers enthusiastically dubbed her “The Girl Gershwin,” a nickname that captured both her remarkable talent and her ability to blend the sophistication of classical music with the irresistible rhythms of jazz.
Yet despite her considerable success, Suesse's name has largely faded from public memory. While George Gershwin's music remains a cornerstone of American concert life, Suesse's equally fascinating contributions have received far less attention. It's a curious fate for a woman who, during her lifetime, helped shape the sound of American music.
And what a remarkable musical life she led!
From Kansas City Prodigy to New York Jazz
Dana Suesse was born on December 3, 1909, in Kansas City, Missouri, at a time when American music was undergoing an extraordinary transformation. Ragtime was flourishing, jazz was beginning to emerge, and a new generation of musicians was discovering possibilities that would forever change the musical landscape.
Suesse showed exceptional musical ability almost from the beginning. Classically trained from an early age, she composed her first song and gave her first public piano concert at just eight years old. By ten, she had already won a composition prize from the National Federation of Music Clubs. Clearly, this was no ordinary childhood.
In 1926, at the age of sixteen, Suesse and her mother traveled to New York City to further her musical education. There, she studied piano with the distinguished Alexander Siloti, a former pupil of Franz Liszt, and composition with Rubin Goldmark, who had also taught George Gershwin.
It was an impressive classical pedigree, but New York offered something else that proved just as important to her development: jazz.
The city's musical life was bursting with energy. Dance orchestras, Broadway theaters, nightclubs, and radio broadcasts were introducing audiences to a distinctly American sound. For a young pianist raised on classical music, it was an entirely new world.
Suesse was fascinated.
“I just kept my ears open and began to understand that there was something very interesting called jazz and popular music,” she later recalled. “This was an unknown territory to me... I compromised and used my classical training to make a bridge between [classical] and what was new to me.”
That bridge would become the defining feature of her musical career.
Becoming “The Girl Gershwin”
Suesse quickly discovered that classical sophistication and jazz rhythms were not opposing forces. In her hands, they became wonderfully compatible partners.
Like Gershwin, she had an instinctive gift for memorable melodies, brilliant piano writing, and infectious rhythmic energy. Her music could be elegant and lyrical one moment, exuberant and syncopated the next. She understood the language of classical composition, but she also knew how to write music that made people smile, tap their feet, and remember a tune long after hearing it.
Her career blossomed during the 1930s. Compositions such as Jazz Nocturne, which became the popular song My Silent Love, and You Oughta Be in Pictures helped establish her reputation. She was equally comfortable writing sophisticated concert music and popular songs, moving between the concert hall and the entertainment world with remarkable ease.
Her success eventually brought an extraordinary distinction. Alongside Gershwin, Suesse was among the American composers invited to perform her own music on the prestigious General Motors Symphony concert broadcasts, which reached listeners across the nation.
The press began calling her “The Girl Gershwin,” and the nickname stuck.
It was flattering, certainly, but it also came with a limitation. Suesse was not simply a female version of George Gershwin. She possessed her own musical voice, characterized by sparkling rhythms, lush harmonies, technical brilliance, and an unmistakable sense of American optimism.
She had become a celebrity in a musical world overwhelmingly dominated by men, and she had done it largely on her own terms.
A Classical Education in Paris
Despite her commercial success, Suesse never abandoned her ambitions as a serious composer.
Determined to deepen her understanding of classical composition, she traveled to Paris to study with the legendary Nadia Boulanger, one of the twentieth century's most influential music teachers. Boulanger's remarkable roster of students included Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and, later, Quincy Jones and Philip Glass.
For three years, Suesse immersed herself in rigorous study. She composed canons, string quartets, and rondos, analyzed Beethoven sonatas, and worked to strengthen her orchestration techniques.
For someone who had already achieved considerable fame and financial success, returning to the classroom must have required both humility and determination. But Suesse was never content to rest on her accomplishments. She wanted to become a better composer, and Boulanger offered the kind of demanding musical environment she sought.
The experience strengthened the classical foundations of her music while giving her new ways to explore the relationship between concert music and American popular styles.
Jazz, Orchestras, and a Triumphant Return
When Suesse returned to the United States, the American musical landscape had changed considerably. The swing era had given way to more progressive approaches to jazz, and pianists such as Cy Coleman, Marian McPartland, and Billy Taylor were exploring increasingly sophisticated harmonic and rhythmic possibilities.
Suesse listened with the same curiosity that had drawn her to jazz as a young woman in New York. Once again, she found inspiration in the meeting of different musical traditions.
One of her most ambitious works was Concerto in Rhythm, later known as the Jazz Concerto in D Major for Combo and Orchestra. The composition brought together her lifelong interests in classical structure, jazz harmony, and rhythmic invention.
When Frederick Fennell, the distinguished conductor associated with the Eastman School of Music, learned of the concerto, he asked Suesse to play it for him at the piano.
He was so impressed that he insisted on being the first to conduct it.
On March 31, 1956, Suesse appeared before an audience of approximately two thousand people, performing the solo piano part while Fennell conducted the Rochester Civic Orchestra.
It was a fitting occasion for a composer who had spent much of her career demonstrating that American jazz and European classical traditions could share the same concert stage.
Independence, Recognition, and a Lasting Legacy
Suesse's achievements were especially remarkable considering the era in which she worked. At a time when women faced significant obstacles in the professional music world, she managed to establish herself as a successful composer, pianist, and financially independent artist at a relatively young age.
She also refused to confine herself to a single musical category. Popular songs, solo piano compositions, orchestral works, jazz-inspired concert pieces—Suesse embraced them all.
In 1974, her accomplishments were recognized with a concert devoted to her music at Carnegie Hall. During the program, she returned to the piano to perform part of her Concerto in Three Rhythms, reconnecting audiences with the brilliant musical personality that had captivated listeners decades earlier.
Following the death of her husband in 1981, Suesse lived a quieter life in New York. But retirement did not mean abandoning music. She continued composing, remaining creatively active into her final years.
Dana Suesse died on October 16, 1987, at the age of 77.
Today, her name remains unfamiliar to many listeners, even those with a deep appreciation for American music. Yet her compositions reveal an artist who was far more than a passing celebrity of the Jazz Age. She was a gifted melodist, a formidable pianist, and an imaginative composer who helped erase the boundaries between classical concert music and American popular traditions.
Her finest piano works deserve particular attention. Filled with brilliant keyboard writing, unexpected harmonic turns, lyrical warmth, and rhythmic vitality, they capture the excitement of an era when American composers were inventing an entirely new musical vocabulary.
Suesse once made a rather melancholy prediction about her own legacy:
“People will appreciate my music after I'm dead.”
Perhaps she understood that musical fashions come and go, but genuinely original music has a way of finding new audiences.
Nearly a century after her rise to fame, Dana Suesse's music is waiting to be discovered all over again.
And it's well worth the discovery.
Selected Performances
Berceuse (published in 1975) - While Suesse was much more known for her jazzy pianistic compositions, here is a lovely little gem that showcases her more lyrical writing. This piece shares a lot of similarities with Erik Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1.
Swamp-Bird (1941) - Swamp-Bird is a very unique piece written by Suesse in 1941. It requires a bit of finger dexterity, but is well worth the time to learn!
Midnight in Gramercy Square (1941) - Midnight in Gramercy Square is a lovely little minuet written by Suesse in 1941. Suesse lived in New York at the time, so the Square referenced is most likely an area around the current Gramercy Park in Manhattan. It takes a bit of time to master all the trills in this piece, but is definitely worth it!
Locating the Music
The best published source I've found is the folio titled Dana Suesse - Jazz Nocturne. There is also a website called Rare Piano Scores that has a section for Dana Suesse. Once purchased, the music can be downloaded immediately in PDF format.
List of Piano Compositions
Syncopated Love Song (1930)
Jazz Nocturne (1931)
Blue Moonlight (1935)
Rockette (1937)
Afternoon Of A Black Faun (1938)
American Nocturne (1939)
110th Street Rhumba (1941)
Serenade To A Skyscraper (1941)
At The Fountain (1941)
Midnight In Gramercy Square (1941)
Swamp-Bird (1941)
The Cocktail Suite (1942)
I. Old-Fashioned
II. Champagne
III. Bacardi
IV. Manhattan
Night Sky (1947)
Scherzette (1956)
Berceuse (1975)
