MICHAEL SWAN: GO USA! >>>

"Rhapsody in Blue" is much more than a jingle for United Airlines. George Gershwin’s piece of music screams American optimism. If you close your eyes as it’s performed you can kind of see the Chrysler Building.

OK, try again.

Hear that American style of crossover between jazz and musicals and songs? It’s singing music, and very colorful. Gershwin wrote “Rhapsody in Blue” in 1924, the same year Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong were kicking ass and taking names. Yet, you can sense the French Impressionists in the piece. Dubbed the world’s first crossover piece, it’s a great combination  â€" American culture and Western European culture.

“Rhapsody in Blue” will be the highlight of the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra’s season opener when American piano soloist Andrew Armstrong performs it before the Pantages crowd Saturday night. Although Google search results tag Armstrong â€" who first turned heads at the 1993 Van Cliburn competition â€" with the Gershwin song in numerous major symphonies, Armstrong tackles the song for the first time in this neck of the woods.

TSO titled opening night “American Rhapsody,” adding all-American ditties such as Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances” from West Side Story, Aaron Copland’s World War II tribute “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World,” which the Czech composer wrote while hanging out in the States during the 1890s.

So grab an American flag, and a glass of wine and salute Armstrong and the Tacoma Symphony Saturday night.

[Pantages Theater, Saturday, Oct. 24, 7:30 p.m., $24-$62, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.591.5894]