Andre Previn

Avid Jazz here presents four classic Andre Previn albums including original LP liner notes on a finely re-mastered and low priced double CD.
“West Side Story”… A 1959 recording of the classic Leonard Bernstein score featuring Andre Previn on piano accompanied by Red Mitchell on bass and Shelly Manne on drums. Take a listen and consider Bernstein’s thoughts from his book “The Joy Of Music” … ”A popular song doesn’t become jazz until it is improvised on, and there you have the real core of jazz improvisation”. “Collaboration”… Andre is joined by Shorty Rogers in an unusual collaboration where each arranger takes turns to lead off with three standard arrangements while the other follows with three original tunes based on the standards chords…

This was André Previn's second album after his long, symphonically enforced absence from jazz, and it sounds noticeably more fluid and relaxed than his first. No longer apprehensive about dusting off his old skills, Previn is delightfully confident and breezy (dig his sly turns on "Come Rain or Come Shine" and "C Jam Blues"), taking some chances as he re-phrases and paraphrases a collection of revivified standards, mostly Harold Arlen and assorted Duke Ellington. Even if Previn, that noted wit, sometimes sounds as if he is kidding the pants off these old tunes, it's great to hear him having such a good time playing jazz again. Mundell Lowe is Previn's new guitar partner, and Ray Brown returns on bass; both are right at home in this refined brand of chamber jazz grooving.

André Previn turned seventy in 1999. From Berlin refugee to multi-Oscar-winning film score composer, from great jazz pianist to chief conductor of both the London Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, through four marriages including Mia Farrow and present wife Heather, with an honorary knighthood for his services to British music, his story is extraordinary. Previn's remarkable career reached a climax in September 1998 with the premier of his first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire. He also conducted the production at the San Francisco Opera, with Renée Fleming as Blanche.

This solo piano set from Andre Previn is a bit unusual for he recasts ten Harold Arlen compositions (all but "For Every Man There's a Woman" and "Cocoanut Sweet" are quite well-known) by reharmonizing the chords and modernizing the melodies…

Here is an example of crossover marketing '90s style - a classical conductor/jazz pianist signed to the classical Deutsche Grammophon label, whose previous jazz album issued on DG got lost in the shops and whose next disc was prudently shifted over to PolyGram's jazz line, Verve. The occasion was a rare jazz concert in Vienna's legendary, acoustically marvelous symphony hall, the Musikvereinsaal, where Previn - who normally leads the Vienna Philharmonic there - enraptured the Viennese with his piano/guitar/bass trio. According to Previn, one member of the Philharmonic was astonished to learn that the music was made on the wing ("You improvised in public?!," he exclaimed). Well, it wasn't that big a deal for Previn and his usual cohorts Mundell Lowe (guitar) and Ray Brown (bass), who turn in an amiable collection of mostly vintage standards that they probably know in their sleep…

From the start of his intermittent side career as a jazz pianist, esteemed conductor and composer Andre Previn has shown more feeling for the form than most classical artists who cross over. Going beyond a recreational involvement in improvised music, he has deepened his playing since skimming stylistic surfaces on his bestselling My Fair Lady album of nearly 50 years ago. Now 78, he gives us what may be his most satisfying jazz recording in Alone: Ballads for Solo Piano. The solo format allows him to reflect his debt to piano masters including Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, and Bud Powell in ways his work with trios and combos hasn't, while showing off his super-refined lyrical touch with its sophisticated sense of color.

This sparkling suite for violin and piano came into being when the composer had to adapt his incidental score for a production of Shakespeare's play to the impending absence of the chamber orchestral. The result is a brilliant piece for violin and piano, which the composer quickly released in a four-movement version. There are other recordings of the chamber orchestra suite in five-movements that duplicate only three of the movements of this version. Violinist Gil Shaham and pianist André Previn are ideal partners in this brilliant performance. The four movements allow Shaham to show four sides of his violinist's personality: He skips and plays in carefree fashion in the opening movement, indulges in the grotesquery and parody of the second, gets to play the romantic in the garden scene of the third movement, and dazzles with virtuosity in the final hornpipe. Previn's part is more than mere accompaniment; the piano often has a large part of the mood of the music and his contribution is, to use a word already employed here, ideal.

The last of a series of showtune albums recorded by the trio of pianist Andre Previn, bassist Red Mitchell and drummer Shelly Manne finds the all-star group focusing on the music of West Side Story (Previn and Manne alternated leadership, and it was the drummer's good fortune to have the famous My Fair Lady album under his own name). This CD reissue has eight of the main themes from the famous musical, including "I Feel Pretty," "Maria" and "America." As usual, the melodies are treated respectfully yet swingingly, and Andre Previn in particular excels in this setting.

For this slightly unusual LP Shorty Rogers and Andre Previn split the arranging chores in a somewhat competitive fashion. Rogers arranges a standard and then that is followed by a Previn original based on the same chord structure. This procedure is followed until the halfway point of the date when they reverse roles. As performed by a nonet featuring Rogers' trumpet, Previn's piano, altoist Bud Shank, Bob Cooper on tenor, baritonist Jimmy Giuffre, trombonist Milt Bernhart and a rhythm section, the result is a dead heat with some fine swinging solos on tunes (and variations) of such songs as "It's DeLovely," "You Stepped Out Of A Dream" and "You Do Something To Me."