They Can't Take That Away from Me: SoundTrax Digital Audio Download

Mark Hayes's arrangement captures the sophistication of the Gershwin original while keeping the harmonic language and vocal ranges accessible to singers at this level. The recorded accompaniment gives your singers a genuine jazz swing to lock into, not a straight-ahead synthetic feel. This is the kind of standard that works equally well in a pop concert, a jazz showcase, or a mixed-repertoire program without sounding out of place anywhere.

Bittersweet and reflective, with an undercurrent of quiet confidence. The melody has an almost conversational quality, as if the singer is making peace with a memory rather than mourning it. Gershwin's harmony adds subtle melancholy around the edges, but the overall arc feels resilient, not defeated.

This arrangement works for treble, mixed, or male choirs with singers who've sung at least one jazz standard or pop arrangement before. High school and college choirs will find it immediately singable; middle school choirs will need more scaffolding around jazz swing and the harmonic language. It's particularly suited to singers who respond well to standards from the golden age of musical theater and want to explore that repertoire seriously.

• Establish swing feel early in rehearsal by having singers listen to the recorded accompaniment before attempting to sing with it. The triplet-based lilt of jazz articulation will be foreign to students trained in classical precision.
• Balance the melody against any inner-voice harmony by checking that blend doesn't bury Gershwin's singable top line. This tune lives on its tune.
• Pay attention to lyrical diction, especially in the repeated phrases. Gershwin's words scan naturally when you lean into conversational phrasing rather than treating every syllable as metrically equal.
• Use the instrumental parts if available to reinforce harmonic movement during rehearsal, especially for singers who need harmonic anchor points before the recorded accompaniment makes sense to them.

Program this alongside other American standards or jazz-inflected choral works to create a thematic set on the American songbook. It also serves as an excellent bridge piece in a concert that moves between classical and contemporary repertoire, proving to audiences that standards deserve serious musical attention. The moderate length and sophisticated simplicity make it an ideal closer for a mixed-repertoire program.

• Singing jazz swing articulation and phrasing in a standard melody context
• Balancing conversational text delivery with musical form
• Reading and performing chromatic harmony typical of jazz-influenced writing
• Listening to recorded accompaniments and locking into accompaniment-driven tempo and groove