CD Reviews

André Previn

Alone | Emarcy

By JON GARELICK | July 10, 2007

3.0 Stars

Although he’s been known for decades as a classical composer and conductor, André Previn has been an acclaimed professional jazz musician since he was a teenager. (Two of his 10 career Grammy awards are for jazz performances.) This new solo-piano CD should re-establish his reputation as an improviser. He gives you everything you could ask for from a program of standards (including a couple of his own: “Darkest Before the Dawn, written with Johnny Mercer, and “You’re Gonna Hear from Me,” with his then-wife, Dory Previn): a fidelity to the “songfulness” of the vocal line with a composer’s attention to harmony and inner voices, and a jazzman’s flair for fleet embellishments. So you get the rarely played (or sung) opening verse of Rodgers & Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and a near-abstraction of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” that shifts into subtle dissonance on the line “There’s an oh such a hungry yearning burning inside of me.” And throughout, there’s a modern classical composer’s ear for harmonic inventiveness that’s as up-to-the-minute as anything by, say, Brad Mehldau. Solitude might be the theme (Previn is recently divorced from classical violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter), but Alone is never sentimental — for a jazzman, that just wouldn’t be cool.

André Previn + Jim Hall + David Finck | Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood, 297 West St, Lenox | July 15 at 8:30 pm | 617.266.1200

Related: Contact!, Anticipation, The down side, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Jazz and Blues, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY JON GARELICK

KURT ROSENWINKEL QUARTET AT THE REGATTABAR | March 07, 2013
Sometimes it takes a few minutes for me to adjust to Kurt Rosenwinkel.

FRED HERSCH TRIO AT SCULLERS | March 01, 2013
Fred Hersch's output as a composer includes an orchestrated setting of poems from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as well as other art-song fare for singers.

RAN BLAKE & DOMINIQUE EADE AT SCULLERS | March 01, 2013
Most virtuosos leave you scratching your head asking, "How did he play that?"

THIS SPRING'S JAZZ & WORLD MUSIC SHOWS | February 28, 2013
The saxophonist Chris Potter started drawing attention when he joined the group of legendary bebop trumpeter Red Rodney as an 18-year-old Manhattan School of Music student.