If you know the songs Taking a Chance on Love , I Can t Get Started , April in Paris , What Is There To Say , or Autumn in New York , then you are already familiar with the music of legendary American songwriter Vernon Duke. He collaborated with Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin, Ogden Nash, Sammy Cahn, John Latouche, and Yip Harburg, and wrote celebrated scores for Broadway and Hollywood. What you may not know is that he was born Vladimir Dukelsky, admitted to the Kiev Conservatory at age 11, where he studied composition with Reinhold Glière and met his older colleague and lifelong friend Sergei Prokofiev. His family escaped Russia during the revolution and arrived in America in 1921, and within a year had befriended a musician named Jacob Gershowitz (you know him as George Gershwin), who persuaded him to Americanize his name and write for musical theater.
