Previn and Jazz: No Disharmony : Maestro: The classical musician will be returning to the genre that first earned him a name in his Saturday San Diego concert.

Before he became internationally known as a classical conductor, composer and pianist Andre Previn was a fixture on the West Coast jazz scene. From the mid-1950s until the early 1960s, he played with people like Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Carter, and he even filled in for legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker’s pianist one weekend. Then classical fame came calling, and Previn abandoned jazz, at least in public. Two years ago, however, with prompting from his wife and his recording label, Previn’s jazz career was reborn.

“I’ve always missed my friends, the jazz guys,” said Previn, who will play a benefit jazz concert for the La Jolla Chamber Music Society Saturday night at 8 at Copley Symphony Hall in downtown San Diego, joined by veteran jazzmen Ray Brown on bass and Mundell Lowe on guitar. Previn is in town for classical performances tonight, Tuesday and Aug. 30, as part of the society’s SummerFest La Jolla program this year.

“In 25 years, I had been around the world three times a year conducting, but never played jazz, except for friends at home. Then my wife said, ‘You love playing, when nobody’s looking, you have so many terrific friends in jazz, why don’t you make one more album?’

“Bob Woods, the owner of Telarc, said, ‘Try to make one more album.’ I made a deal with him. I said, ‘I’ll make you an album, but if, at the end of the first session, I have a word with the two guys I want to play with, Ray Brown and Joe Pass, if they think what we’re doing is in any way embarrassing, to me, to them, to an audience, to a listener, then you’re stuck for the session and can’t release anything.

“At the end of the first session, I took the two guys outside, and, thank goodness, they were completely surprised. They said, ‘You’re insane. It sounds good!’ We brought it out, and it was a terrific success.”

Sales of “After Hours,” the 1989 album with Brown and Pass, were about 70,000, according to Telarc, well above average for a straight-ahead jazz recording. “Uptown,” last year’s follow-up, with San Diegan Lowe replacing Pass, produced similar sales. And, with his revived jazz career swinging, Previn, 62, plans to make one jazz album a year. Tonight’s performance is being recorded as his next.

In the context of a jazz group, where collective improvisation among musicians-as-equals is essential, a conductor might have difficulty relinquishing control. But Previn said he has been able to keep his jazz and classical careers separate.

“The two things have nothing in common,” Previn said. “There will always be people who try to force the issue into having one depend on the other, but I don’t think one has anything to do with the other.”

A few moments later, though, Previn acknowledged that improvisation, the essence of jazz, is also a longstanding tradition in classical music.

“Improvisation in classical music in the current century is minimal, but up until the end of the 18th Century, there was a lot,” he said. “Mozart improvised. Beethoven improvised. It was part and parcel of every musician’s work. They all did it.”

Although Previn was away from jazz for 25 years, and still plays jazz only part-time, his skills as a jazz pianist impress veterans like Lowe.

“In the first place, I think he’s a phenomenal musician in the respect that he is one of the hottest things going now in classical music,” said Lowe, who met Previn in New York in the 1950s but didn’t play with him until they recorded together last year. (A footnote: Previn was once married to singer Betty Bennett, who is now Lowe’s wife.)

“He is also a very exciting jazz player. He’s the only one around that is doing that kind of thing, with a foot planted in each camp, and doing it very well. Can he hold his own? Oh sure. Of course. He does hold his own. You go back and look at his record, he was quite a name as a jazz piano player, long before he began conducting symphonies.”

Indeed, Previn’s list of jazz credits is more impressive than many jazz fans will remember. The earlier generation of Previn jazz recordings, from the 1950s and ‘60s, when he was living in Los Angeles and scoring movies for MGM, includes albums with Shelley Manne and Red Mitchell, Barney Kessel, Shorty Rogers, Leontyne Price, as well as a collection of Fats Waller songs and a ragtime sampler with, of all people, violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Many of Previn’s earlier jazz albums have been re-released on compact disc, including his best selling 1957 rendition of the music from “My Fair Lady” with Manne.

“Uptown” consists of some of Previn’s favorite jazz and popular standards, primarily songs by Harold Arlen, (including “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “Stormy Weather”) and Duke Ellington (including “C Jam Blues” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”).

Tonight, Previn, Brown and Lowe will tackle a repertoire of jazz and popular standards that Previn has not previously recorded.

Although Previn is in love with jazz all over again, his jazz career will still take a back seat to his classical career, at least in the near term. After tonight’s concert, Previn, Brown and Lowe will perform together once more next month on the East Coast, then won’t be together again until a tour planned for 1993.

Previn, who lives in rural Westchester County in New York, returns to New York tomorrow to make a new recording of chamber music. Next week, he will be in London conducting the London Philharmonic--he led the orchestra for 11 years and now holds the title of “Conductor Laureate.”

As if he wasn’t busy enough with jazz and classical music, Previn has written a book detailing the years he spent working for MGM, between 1950 and 1964. Previn earned four Academy Awards for his film scores, and he remembers those years fondly as the last golden days of Hollywood. The book, titled “No Minor Chord,” is due in November.

Previn knew nothing of jazz when he was growing up in Berlin, where he was born, and he was still naive when his family emigrated to the United States, settling in Los Angeles in 1939.

“When I came over here, I thought jazz was hotel bands with funny hats,” he laughed. “I never heard of any kind of jazz, and I didn’t until I was 13. Then someone gave me some Art Tatum records, and I was off and imitating like crazy. I went through all the customary phases--Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and I don’t think anyone has played piano better than Bill Evans.”

For Previn, one nice thing about jazz is the spontaneous nature of the music and musicians.

“It’s a special faculty they have,” Previn said. “I hadn’t worked with Ray for 25 years. Then he walked into the studio, and he acted as if we’d just had lunch yesterday.”

Andre Previn will perform a benefit jazz concert for the La Jolla Chamber Music Society tomorrow night at 8 at Copley Symphony Hall . Four hundred special seats for tomorrow’s show, priced at $45 and $125, are all sold. Remaining seats priced at $12.50 and $20 are still available. Order them by calling 459-3728.