André Previn’s Jazz is a production of Soho the Dog.
Disclaimer: This project was undertaken during the annus insolitus of 2020-21, when research possibilities were largely limited to what could be accessed via the internet. As libraries and archives reopen, I anticipate adjustments and corrections, which will be duly logged.
Much of the background research underpinning this work was the product of a 2018 fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University; my gratitude to the Institute, its staff, and its community of scholars is profound. Thanks also to Greg Poppleton for generously sharing rare recordings from his collection and helpfully steering me toward others. And special thanks to Ethan Iverson and Mark Stryker for providing invaluable knowledge, expertise, judgement, and enthusiasm. Any and all errors—of fact or opinion—are mine alone.
The delightful Helena Guerrieri was my kitchen table-mate for the entirety of the writing of this survey. It is dedicated to her.
About the author: Matthew Guerrieri is a writer and musician whose work has appeared frequently in the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and NewMusicBox. He is the author of The First Four Notes: Beethoven’s Fifth and the Human Imagination (Knopf, 2012) and The Black Archive: Horror of Fang Rock (Obverse Books, 2019). He was a fellow in composition at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1998, where he met André Previn, who did a masterclass and told some good Kathleen Battle stories.
Comments, corrections, queries, quarrels: matthewguerrieri [at] gmail [dot] com.