Nadine Dana Suesse (December 3, 1909 – October 16, 1987) was an American musician, composer and lyricist.
Dana Suesse (pronounced Sweese) enjoyed considerable celebrity as a composer in the 1930s and 1940s, but today her name is not well known. A musical prodigy, she was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and given classical music training at a young age with the teacher Gertrude Concannon. She composed her first song and gave her first piano concert at age eight. At age ten, she won a prize for composition from the National Federation of Music. While still a child, Suesse toured the Midwest vaudeville circuits with an act cantered on dancing and piano playing. During the recital, she would ask the audience for a theme, and then proceed to take that theme, weaving it into something of her own.
In 1926, Dana and her mother traveled to New York to advance her studies with the great piano teacher Alexander Siloti (at that time one of the four surviving pupils of Franz Liszt), and Rubin Goldmark, one of George Gershwin's teachers, and spent three years studying with Nadia Boulanger after World War II. In 1931, bandleader Paul Whiteman (following Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue) commissioned her to write "Concerto in Three Rhythms."
In early 1932, she recorded a piano roll of the Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal popular tune "Was That The Human Thing To Do" for the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art reproducing piano system. Beginning in 1930, Suesse formed a songwriting partnership with impresario Billy Rose (usually in collaboration with other lyricists) that lasted into the 1940s. . She was the only American composer other than George Gershwin to be invited to perform on the now legendary General Motors Symphony concert series of nationwide broadcasts. It wasn't long after that the press began to refer to her as "The Girl Gershwin." Suesse's serious works were overshadowed by her commercial song-writing successes, which included "My Silent Love" (which came from a larger piece called "Jazz Nocturne"). She collaborated with lyricist Eddie Heyman on "You Ought to Be in Pictures" in addition to other hits, including "Ho-Hum."
In 1936 Suesse lived in Fort Worth, Texas for three months to compose the score for Rose's Casa Mañana, the spectacular outdoor dinner theatre of the Fort Worth Frontier Centennial. With Rose and Irving Kahal she composed "The Night Is Young And You're So Beautiful," which won a fifth place on Your Hit Parade on the broadcast of February 6, 1937, and stayed on the program for six weeks.
In the 1940s Suesse was Rose's staff composer for his legendary Diamond Horseshoe Revues. She moved to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger for three years, composing canons, string quartets, rondos, analyzing Beethoven sonatas and re-learning orchestration. After her return to the States, Dana was fascinated with the new progressive jazz sounds created by such pianists as Cy Coleman, Marian McPartland, and Billy Taylor.
Frederick Fennell, conductor of the Eastman School of Music, heard about her Concerto in Rhythm (later called Jazz Concerto In D Major for Combo and Orchestra), and requested she play it for him on the piano, after which he insisted he be the first to conduct it. Before an audience of two thousand, Suesse played the solo part as Fennell conducted the Rochester Civic Orchestra on Saturday night, March 31, 1956.
Suesse managed to become financially independent at a fairly young age, an impressive feat for any woman in those times, but especially for a serious composer. In 1974, she was honoured with a concert of her works at Carnegie Hall, where she performed part of her Concerto in Three Rhythms. A year after the Carnegie Hall concert, Suesse and her husband moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands.
(Edited from Wikipedia & American Piano Music)