He began composing for Hollywood at 16, won a quartet of Oscars and was a jazz piano phenomenon and major symphonic conductor. He counted actress Mia Farrow among his five wives.
By Tim Page February 28 at 12:58 PM André Previn, a musical polymath who began composing for Hollywood at 16, won a quartet of Oscars and had additional careers as a jazz piano phenomenon and major symphonic conductor — all while forging a public identity as a jet-setter who counted actress Mia Farrow among his five wives — died Feb. 28 at 89.
“And he could do this as composer, conductor or performer as the situation warranted,” Gioia said. “In some ways, he epitomizes the great era of middlebrow art in America, when audiences rewarded artists who crafted popular art with a dose of aesthetic sophistication and packaged it for crossover success.”
“Well, I was 17 and I simply could not allow myself to put a subtext connotation to this, so I asked: ‘You mean you don’t have a ride home?’ Ava gave me a long, searching look, saw that I was serious, excused herself and got up from the piano bench.” He soon began arranging for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. “They were always looking for somebody who was talented, fast and cheap, and, because I was a kid, I was all three,” he later quipped.
Meanwhile, Mr. Previn took his hard-driving bebop jazz trio to the Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz at the Philharmonic in Los Angeles and other major venues. Mr. Previn worked with drummer Shelly Manne on one of the first jazz albums of a Broadway score, for “My Fair Lady” , which sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
He began by recording piano and chamber-music pieces for Columbia Records that won him a guest conductorship with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Throughout his conducting career, Mr. Previn continued to compose. A 1970 concerto for classical guitarist John Williams was “a warm, approachable work with enthralling passages,” Manchester Guardian music critic Edward Greenfield wrote at the time.
The family left Germany on the pretext of a weekend visit to Paris. They never went back, even though it meant abandoning all their possessions. Once in Los Angeles, an American-born relative, Universal Studios musical director Charles Previn, helped André find work at rival MGM. Mr. Previn severed ties to Soon-Yi after her relationship with — and eventual marriage to — filmmaker Woody Allen. “She does not exist,” Mr. Previn told Vanity Fair in 2013.
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