Andre Previn Returns to His Roots

“It’s like being rejuvenated. I thoroughly enjoy it,” Andre Previn said.

The return of the renowned conductor to jazz marks yet another parallel between his career and that of Mel Powell. Both were teen-age jazz piano prodigies; both eventually left the jazz world to take up a classical career (Previn as a multiple award-winning conductor, Powell as a composer who recently won a Pulitzer Prize). Both returned to jazz, on a part-time basis, during the past couple of years, and both revealed an undiminished talent for improvisation. As if to stress the bonds of these two old friends, Powell has written the liner notes for Previn’s second jazz album, due out this summer.

Previn did not return to jazz without reservations. Relaxing in his suite in a Beverly Hills hotel before leaving on a three-week tour with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he said: “I have a real disdain for people who treat jazz as if it were a hobby you can just pick up again. But some people with long, kind memories kept asking me about recording some jazz, and Bob Woods of Telarc Records kept after me.

“Basically it was my wife who talked me into it. Heather said, ‘You don’t have to prove anything. You enjoy playing with those guys, so go out and have a good time.’ Finally I said, ‘Let’s see if we can get Joe Pass and Ray Brown to do this.’

“I made a proviso: At the end of the first session, I wanted to take Joe and Ray aside, and ask them whether this was going to embarrass them, or me, or the audience. So after the session I did just that, and they looked at me as if I were insane. So we went ahead and I made another one.”

“After Hours” has done, in Previn’s own words, “unbelievably well--it’s even been on the radio a lot, which surprised me. So we’ve made a second album, this time with Mundell Lowe on guitar, and this summer at Tanglewood, after three concerts with the Boston Symphony, I’ll be doing an entire evening with Ray and Mundy.”

Previn’s joy in making these albums was due in large measure to the company he kept. Bassist Brown, an old friend, played on the last Previn album before his retirement from jazz, “Four to Go,” with Herb Ellis and Shelly Manne.

Guitarist Pass, whom Previn calls “one of the most staggering virtuosos I ever heard,” worked with him occasionally in the past. “Because he played on my date, I owe him one, so I’ll be a sideman on his next album.”

Mundell Lowe, he says, is “not only a wonderful guitarist but such a nice man. I was going to play on the album he and Betty just made, but I was out of town.” (Betty Bennett, now Mrs. Mundell Lowe, was Mrs. Andre Previn in the 1950s.) “I didn’t get to play, but at least I’ll write her liner notes,” says her amiable ex-husband.

Previn’s jazz career overlapped with his years as an MGM studio composer/arranger/conductor. He recorded for two independent jazz labels from the age of 16, was at RCA Victor for six years playing jazz and pop dates, but most memorably formed an alliance with the drummer Shelly Manne. Together they made a dozen albums for Contemporary. Possibly his most memorable year was 1957, when he went to Paris to score “Gigi” (it won a Grammy and an Academy Award) and had his first major jazz hit with the Manne-Previn “My Fair Lady.”

Over the years Previn has seen a lessening of the condescension with which the classical world so long regarded jazz. “Some of the really great virtuosos like Yo-Yo Ma would give anything to be able to play it; they’re all very interested and they go to listen to jazz people. And Itzhak Perlman, with whom I recorded--well, on the first session everything was written out for him, but he said, ‘I’m very nervous about this.’ I said, ‘What on earth for?’ And he said, ‘I looked at the stuff you wrote and I’m afraid I have a tendency to rush the tempo.’ So Shelly Manne looked at him with a straight face and said, ‘Don’t worry Itzhak; we won’t . ‘ And of course they didn’t and he didn’t and it was great; besides, he really had a feel for it. People like him and Yo-Yo Ma want to hear it or want to play it and they most certainly don’t take it lightly.”

While professing to have no expertise about jazz as it is practiced today, Previn clearly has not been totally removed from the scene. He is particularly impressed by cornetist Warren Vache and tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton.

“I have one solo album by Warren--God, he’s good! It actually makes me happy when he plays. I’ve never met him, but I’d love to make some records with him. Scott is a fine musician too. So you see, I’ve kept up to an extent, but I’m stuck in that kind of groove. It’s hard for me to get excited about a brand-new pianist when I’m still so full of admiration for Bill Evans.”

He has always cited Evans, Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson as his pianists of choice. “A few weeks ago I went to the Blue Note in New York to hear Oscar and Herb Ellis, who’s a phenomenal guitarist. Basically, my idols are the same people I idolized 25 years ago.”

Asked about the Marsalis brothers, he said: “Wynton is technically amazing. It’s the cleanest playing I’ve ever heard in my life; it has to be said that at those up tempos he’s astonishing.” As for Marsalis’ comment that in his experience jazz has proved a more demanding discipline to conquer than classical music: “That could be because the repertoire for a classical trumpet player is minuscule and not very interesting. In other words, that comment my not be applicable to all the instruments, but I understand what he means.

“I’ve never met Wynton either, but I sure would like to. And Branford Marsalis--I admire his playing a lot .

“There are so many highly trained musicians today. Niels Pedersen is a totally proficient classical bass player; he has so much technique he frightens me. I worked with him once, about seven years ago when I made an album with Ella Fitzgerald. We did the entire album in one afternoon, just the three of us.”

Previn is now on his L.A. Philharmonic tour, which will be followed by concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic, including the Salzburg Festival; then it will be on to Berlin and some dates in London, where he has been the principal conductor for the Royal Philharmonic since 1985. (Previously he was music director of the London Symphony for 11 years. Until he bought a home in New York’s Westchester County last year, Great Britain had been his home base for 23 years.)

For all the fame and success conducting has brought him, he still relishes every chance to return to the piano. “Once in a while I have to have the pleasure of playing a little. I play chamber music anywhere and everywhere I go.

“Conductors become too used to telling other people how to play, instead of reminding themselves how hard it is. I love playing, and that’s why I have such a good time with people like Ray and Joe and Mundy.”