Focus Group Master Frank Luntz

Frank Ian Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political consultant, pollster, and "public opinion guru" best known for developing talking points and other messaging for various Republican causes. His work has included assistance with messaging for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, and public relations support for pro-Israel policies in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He advocated use of vocabulary crafted to produce a desired effect; including use of the term death tax instead of estate tax, and climate change instead of global warming.

                                                              Frank Luntz in 2009

Luntz's most recent work has been with Fox News as a frequent commentator and analyst, as well as running focus groups during and after presidential debates on CBSN. Luntz describes his specialty as "testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate." He is also an author of business books dealing with communication strategies and public opinion. Luntz's current company, Luntz Global, LLC, specializes in message creation and image management for commercial and political clients.

Background

Luntz was born and grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Phyllys (née Kelmenson) and Lester Luntz, who together wrote the first American forensic dentistry textbook. His family was Jewish. He graduated from Hall High School, graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in history and political science from the University of Pennsylvania, and received a doctorate in politics from Oxford University.

Luntz has appeared as a consultant or panel member on a number of television news shows, including The Colbert Report, Capital Gang, Good Morning America, Hannity, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Meet the Press, PBS NewsHour, Nightline, The O'Reilly Factor, Real Time with Bill Maher, and The Today Show. He has written op-eds for publications such as The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

He was an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1989 until 1996 and also taught at George Washington University and Harvard University.

Use of Language

Luntz frequently tests word and phrase choices using focus groups and interviews. His stated purpose in this is the goal of causing audiences to react based on emotion. "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. ... If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak."

In an article in The New Yorker Luntz is quoted as saying,

The way my words are created is by taking the words of others.... I've moderated an average of a hundred plus focus groups a year over five years... I show them language that I've created. Then I leave a line for them to create language for me.

In a 2007 interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Luntz redefined the term "Orwellian" in a "positive" sense, saying that if one reads George Orwell's essay on language (presumably referring to "Politics and the English Language"), "To be 'Orwellian' is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever."

Luntz's description of "Orwellian" is considered to contradict both its popularly defined meaning as well as that defined by Orwell. Luntz believes that Orwell would not have approved of many of the uses to which his pseudonym is applied by quoting Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", where Luntz focuses on how Orwell derides the use of cliché and dying metaphors.

Luntz's description of his job revolves around exploiting the emotional content of language. "It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. ... my job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion. ... We know that words and emotion together are the most powerful force known to mankind."

Additionally in his 2007 interview on Fresh Air, Luntz discussed his use of the term, "energy exploration" (oil drilling). His research on the matter involved showing people a picture of current oil drilling and asking if in the picture it "looks like exploration or drilling." He said that 90 percent of the people he spoke to said it looked like exploring. "Therefore I'd argue that it is a more appropriate way to communicate." He went on to say, "if the public says after looking at the pictures, that doesn't look like my definition of drilling—it looks like my definition of exploring—then don't you think we should be calling it what people see it to be, rather than adding a political aspect to it all?" Terry Gross responded, "Should we be calling it what it actually is, as opposed to what somebody thinks it might be? The difference between exploration and actually getting out the oil—they're two different things, aren't they?"

James L. Martin, chairman of the conservative 60 Plus Association, described Luntz's role as being that of pollster and popularizer of the phrase "death tax."

Martin gained an important ally in GOP pollster Frank Luntz, whose polling revealed that 'death tax' sparked voter resentment in a way that 'inheritance tax' and 'estate tax' couldn't match. After all, who wouldn't be opposed to a 'tax on death'? Luntz shared his findings with Republicans and included the phrase in the GOP's Contract with America. Luntz went so far as to recommend in a memo to GOP lawmakers that they stage press conferences 'at your local mortuary' to dramatize the issue. 'I believe this backdrop will clearly resonate with your constituents,' he wrote. 'Death is something the American people understand.' Apparently, he's right. Spurred by Luntz, Republicans have employed the term 'death tax' so aggressively that it has entered the popular lexicon. Nonpartisan venues like newspapers and magazines have begun to use it in a neutral context—a coup for abolitionists like Martin.

In a confidential memo to the Republican party, Luntz is credited with advising the Bush administration that the phrase "global warming" should be abandoned in favor of "climate change", which he called a "less frightening" phrase than the former.

                                 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz

"Mineral Evolution" Explained

Mineral evolution is a recent hypothesis that provides historical context to mineralogy. It postulates that mineralogy on planets and moons becomes increasingly complex as a result of changes in the physical, chemical and biological environment. In the Solar System, the number of mineral species has grown from about a dozen to over 5300 as a result of three processes: separation and concentration of elements; greater ranges of temperature and pressure coupled with the action of volatiles; and new chemical pathways provided by living organisms.

On Earth, there were three eras of mineral evolution. The birth of the Sun and formation of asteroids and planets increased the number of minerals to about 250. Repeated reworking of the crust and mantle through processes such as partial melting and plate tectonics increased the total to about 1500. The remaining minerals, more than two-thirds of the total, were the result of chemical changes mediated by living organisms, with the largest increase occurring after the Great Oxygenation Event.

Use of the Term “Evolution”

In the 2008 paper that introduced the term "mineral evolution", Robert Hazen and co-authors recognized that an application of the word "evolution" to minerals was likely to be controversial, although there were precedents as far back as the 1928 book The Evolution of the Igneous Rocks by Norman Bowen. They used the term in the sense of an irreversible sequence of events leading to increasingly complex and diverse assemblages of minerals. Unlike biological evolution, it does not involve mutation, competition or passing of information to progeny. Hazen et al. explored some other analogies, including the idea of extinction. Some mineral-forming processes no longer occur, such as those that produced certain minerals in enstatite chondrites that are unstable on Earth in its oxidized state. Also, the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus may have led to permanent losses of mineral species. However, mineral extinction is not truly irreversible; a lost mineral could emerge again if suitable environmental conditions were re-established.

Presolar Minerals

In the early Universe, there were no minerals because the only elements available were hydrogen, helium and trace amounts of lithium. Mineral formation became possible after heavier elements, including carbon, oxygen, silicon and nitrogen, were synthesized in stars. In the expanding atmospheres of red giants and the ejecta from supernovae, microscopic minerals formed at temperatures above 1,500 °C (2,730 °F).

Evidence of these minerals can be found in interstellar grains incorporated into primitive meteorites called chondrites, which are essentially cosmic sedimentary rocks. The number of known species is roughly a dozen, although several more materials have been identified but not classified as minerals. Because it has a high crystallization temperature (about 4,400 °C (7,950 °F)), diamond was probably the first mineral to form. This was followed by graphite, oxides (rutile, corundum, spinel, hibonite), carbides (moissanite), nitrides (osbornite and silicon nitride) and silicates (forsterite and silicate perovskite (MgSiO₃)). These "ur-minerals" seeded the molecular clouds from which the Solar system was formed.

Origin of Life

Over two-thirds of mineral species owe their existence to life, but life may also owe its existence to minerals. They may have been needed as templates to bring organic molecules together; as catalysts for chemical reactions; and as metabolites. Two prominent theories for the origin of life involve clays and transition metal sulfides. Another theory argues that calcium-borate minerals such as colemanite and borate, and possibly also molybdate, may have been needed for the first ribonucleic acid (RNA) to form. Other theories require less common minerals such as mackinawite or greigite. A catalog of the minerals that were formed during the Hadeon Eon includes clay minerals and iron and nickel sulfides, including mackinawite and greigite; but borates and molybdates were unlikely.

Minerals may also have been necessary to the survival of early life. For example, quartz is more transparent than other minerals in sandstones. Before life developed pigments to protect it from damaging ultraviolet rays, a thin layer of quartz could shield it while allowing enough light through for photosynthesis. Phosphate minerals may also have been important to early life. Phosphorus is one of the essential elements in molecules such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP), an energy carrier found in all living cells; RNA and DNA; and cell membranes. Most of Earth's phosphorus is in the core and mantle. The most likely mechanism for making it available to life would be the creation of phosphates such as apatite through fractionation, followed by weathering to release the phosphorus. This may have required plate tectonics.

Further Research

Since the original paper on mineral evolution, there have been several studies of minerals of specific elements, including uranium, thorium, mercury, carbon, beryllium, and the clay minerals. These reveal information about different processes; for example, uranium and thorium are heat producers while uranium and carbon indicate oxidation state. The records reveal episodic bursts of new minerals such as those during the Boring Billion, as well as long periods where no new minerals appeared. For example, after a jump in diversity during the assembly of Columbia, there were no new mercury minerals between 1.8 Ga and 600 million years ago. This remarkably long hiatus is attributed to a sulfide-rich ocean, which led to rapid deposition of the mineral cinnabar.

Most of the mineral evolution papers have looked at the first appearance of minerals, but one can also look at the age distribution of a given mineral. Millions of zircon crystals have been dated, and the age distributions are nearly independent of where the crystals are found (e.g., igneous rocks, sedimentary or metasedimentary rocks or modern river sands). They have highs and lows that are linked with the supercontinent cycle, although it is not clear whether this is due to changes in subduction activity or preservation.

Other studies have looked at time variations of mineral properties such as isotope ratios, chemical compositions, and relative abundances of minerals, although not under the rubric of "mineral evolution.”

History

For most of its history, mineralogy had no historical component. It was concerned with classifying minerals according to their chemical and physical properties (such as the chemical formula and crystal structure) and defining conditions for stability of a mineral or group of minerals. However, there were exceptions where publications looked at the distribution of ages of minerals or of ores. In 1960, Russell Gordon Gastil found cycles in the distribution of mineral dates. Charles Meyer, finding that the ores of some elements are distributed over a wider time span than others, attributed the difference to the effects of tectonics and biomass on the surface chemistry, particularly free oxygen and carbon. In 1979, A. G. Zhabin introduced the concept of stages of mineral evolution in the Russian-language journal Doklady Akademii Nauk and in 1982, N. P. Yushkin noted the increasing complexity of minerals over time near the surface of the Earth. Then, in 2008, Hazen and colleagues introduced a much broader and more detailed vision of mineral evolution. This was followed by a series of quantitative explorations of the evolution of various mineral groups. These led in 2015 to the concept of mineral ecology, the study of distributions of minerals in space and time.

In April 2017, the Natural History Museum in Vienna opened a new permanent exhibit on mineral evolution.
                                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_evolution

Stem Cells Vanquish AIDS

Stem Cell transplant fights AIDS and appears to have eliminated the disease for two cases in Europe, the Associated Press reports.  See https://apnews.com/9f8d7c7a1bd44c20abb34b7f3fc39c74

The Shepard Tabletop Illusion

Shepard tables (also known as the Shepard tabletop illusion) are an optical illusion first published in 1990 as "Turning the Tables," by Stanford psychologist Roger N. Shepard in his book Mind Sights, a collection of illusions that he had created. It is one of the most powerful optical illusions, typically creating length miscalculations of 20–25%.

                                                           Shepard Tabletop Illusion 
To quote A Dictionary of Psychology, the Shepard table illusion makes "a pair of identical parallelograms representing the tops of two tables appear radically different" because our eyes decode them according to rules for three-dimensional objects.

The illusion is based on a drawing of two parallelograms, identical aside from a rotation of 45 degrees. When the parallelograms are presented as tabletops, however, we see them as objects in three-dimensional space. One "table" seems long and narrow, with its longer dimension receding into the distance. The other "table" looks almost square, because we interpret its shorter dimension as foreshortening. The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences explains the illusion as an effect of "size and shape constancy [which] subjectively expand[s] the near-far dimension along the line of sight." It classifies Shepard tables as an example of a geometrical illusion, in the category of an "illusion of size."

According to Shepard, "any knowledge or understanding of the illusion we may gain at the intellectual level remains virtually powerless to diminish the magnitude of the illusion." Interestingly, children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are less susceptible to the Shepard table illusion than typically developing children but are equally susceptible to the Ebbinghaus illusion.

Shepard had described an earlier, less-powerful version of the illusion in 1981 as the "parallelogram illusion" (Perceptual Organization, pp. 297–9). The illusion can also be constructed using identical trapezoids rather than identical parallelograms.

A variant of the Shepard tabletop illusion was named "Best Illusion of the Year" for 2009.

Christopher W. Tyler, among others, has done scholarly research on the illusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tables

Problems with Wind and Solar Power

Wind and Solar energies are too inefficient to actually clean the environment.  See https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/

2019 Kashmir Conflict

The 2019 India–Pakistan standoff is an ongoing military conflict in the disputed Kashmir region and its neighboring provinces. The standoff had its roots in an attack that happened on 14 February 2019, when 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force members were killed in a suicide bombing perpetrated by a militant from Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for the attack. The government of Pakistan condemned the attack and denied any involvement.

                                                              Map of Kashmir

In response, the Indian Air Force conducted air strikes on 26 February over the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir, the first such strikes since the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. The Indian government stated that it had targeted a terrorist training camp and claimed that the strikes had killed several militants. The claims were disputed by the local residents of the targeted area and by the Pakistani military, which stated that there were no casualties or damage to infrastructure.

On 26 and 27 February, India and Pakistan exchanged fire across the LOC. Ten Indian soldiers were injured in the skirmishes. Four Pakistani civilians were killed in the shelling.

On 27 February, Pakistan conducted air strikes in Indian-administered Kashmir which did not cause any casualties or damage. Pakistan claimed that two Indian jets were shot down over Pakistani airspace and two pilots captured. India said that only one MiG-21 was lost and demanded the release of the pilot. India claimed to have shot down a Pakistani F-16, but Pakistan denied that. Pakistan later clarified that only one pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, was captured, and was subsequently released on 1 March.

Background

India and Pakistan have long been at odds with the other, having engaged in several wars, conflicts, and various military standoffs. The roots of continued tension are complex, but have centered mainly around the state of Kashmir. After the 1947 Partition of India, the newly formed Pakistan and India squabbled over the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which turned into the full-scale Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948. Partially at issue was the fact that the 1947 partition had not determined the final status of the princely state. The issue has proved intractable, leading to further war in 1965, as well as in 1971. Both nations are armed with nuclear weapons after developing them in the 1990's, which may have served to limit the severity of the 1999 Kargil War.

The 2019 Indo-Pakistan military standoff is in reaction to a terror attack in mid-February 2019, when a convoy of Central Reserve Police Force carrying security personnel on the Jammu Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethpora (near Awantipora) in the Pulwama district, Jammu and Kashmir, India. Over 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel and the perpetrator were killed in the attack, which Jaish-e-Mohammed took responsibility for. The attacker was identified as Adil Ahmad Dar, a local from Jammu and Kashmir, and a member of Jaish-e-Mohammed. This was the deadliest attack on Indian forces in Kashmir since 1989.

On 27 February, Pakistan cancelled all commercial flights and closed its airspace until the midnight of 28 February. A NOTAM was issued by the Civil Aviation Authority to close the airspace. Airlines were forced to reroute or cancel their flights with routes planned over Pakistan, leaving passengers stranded. On 01 March at 1140 UTC the NOTAM closing the airspace was extended until 0800 UTC on 04 March with 23 exceptions listed.

On 28 February, Samjhauta Express, a train that runs twice weekly between India and Pakistan, was suspended by the government of Pakistan. It was scheduled to depart from Lahore with 16 passengers who are now stuck at Lahore.

International Reaction

A number of nations, including Australia, Canada, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, expressed their concern and/or called for restraint. Iran and Turkey have each offered to mediate the crisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_standoff

Musician Andre Previn Dies

André George Previn, KBE (/ˈprɛvɪn/; born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German-born American pianist, conductor, and composer. Starting by arranging and composing Hollywood film scores for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Previn was involved in the music for over 50 films over his entire career. He won four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings (and one more for his Lifetime Achievement). He had been the music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

                                                             Previn in October 1973

Early life

Previn was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Charlotte (née Epstein; Frankfurt 1891–1986) and Jack Previn (Jakob Priwin; Graudenz 1885–1963), who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher. He is said to have been "a distant relative of" the composer Gustav Mahler. However, in a pre-concert public interview at Lincoln Center, in May 2012, Previn laughed at the suggestion that he was related to Mahler. The year of his birth is uncertain. Whereas most published reports give 1929, Previn himself stated that 1930 was his birth year.

In 1938, his Jewish family left Berlin and via Paris sailed to New York on October 20 and from there to Los Angeles on November 26. His father's second cousin Charles Previn was music director for Universal. André grew up in Los Angeles and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1943. At Previn's 1946 graduation from Beverly Hills High School he played a musical duet with Richard M. Sherman; Previn played the piano, accompanying Sherman (who played flute). Coincidentally, both composers won 1964 Oscars for different films, both winning in musical categories.

In 1951 and 1952, while stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco during his military service, Previn took private conducting lessons from Pierre Monteux, which he valued highly.

At the Hollywood studios

Previn came to prominence by arranging and composing Hollywood film scores, first working for MGM when he was still in high school in 1946 after the studio's music department noticed his work for a local radio program. The film studios, he said in 2005, "were always looking for somebody who was talented, fast and cheap and, because I was a kid, I was all three. So they hired me to do piecework and I evidently did it very well." At 18 he became a composer-conductor for the studio. His first official credit was for an entry in the Lassie series, The Sun Comes Up (1949), which much later he thought was "the most inept score you ever heard" after seeing a television rerun.

Previn remained with MGM for a decade and a half, but resigned in his early 30s. He told Emma Brockes of The Guardian in 2008: "At MGM you knew you were going to be working next year, you knew you were going to get paid. But I was too ambitious musically to settle for it. And I wanted to gamble with whatever talent I might have had."

His break with the film world in the 1960s was not as straightforward as he often tried to claim in later life. His film work continued until Rollerball (1975). Over his entire film career, Previn was involved in the music for over 50 movies as composer, conductor or performer.

Career in classical music

In 1967, Previn succeeded Sir John Barbirolli as music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. In 1968, he began his tenure as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), serving in that post until 1979. During his LSO tenure, he and the LSO appeared on the BBC Television programme André Previn's Music Night. However, during his period with the LSO, according to the music critic Martin Bernheimer, Previn gained the reputation of being "a first-rate conductor of second-rate music."

From 1976 to 1984, he was music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) and, in turn, had another television series with the PSO entitled Previn and the Pittsburgh. He was then principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985 to 1988.

In 1985, he became music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Although Previn's tenure with the orchestra was deemed satisfactory from a professional perspective, other conductors, including Kurt Sanderling, Simon Rattle, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, did a better job at selling out concerts. Previn clashed frequently with Ernest Fleischmann (the LAPO's Executive VP and General Manager), including the dispute when Fleischmann failed to consult Previn before naming Salonen as Principal Guest Conductor of the orchestra, complete with a tour of Japan. As a result of Previn's objections, Salonen's title and Japanese tour were withdrawn; however, shortly thereafter, in April 1989, Previn resigned. Four months later, Salonen was named Music Director Designate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, officially taking the post of Music Director in October 1992.

Previn was music director of the Oslo Philharmonic from 2002 to 2006, and in 2009 he was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Television

Previn also enjoyed a long relationship with the medium of television, featuring in Meet André Previn (1969) on London Weekend Television, the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in 1971 and 1972 (BBC), André Previn's Music Night (conducting the London Symphony Orchestra—three programmes in 1973, others in 1975 and 1976), television interviews with other artists, appearances on Call My Bluff, and participation in documentaries about popular music and jazz during the 1970s and 1980s. Previn became known to a broad public through his television work. In the United Kingdom he worked on TV with the London Symphony Orchestra. In the U.S. the television program "Previn and the Pittsburgh" (1977) featured him in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Previn is particularly remembered in Britain for his performance as "Mr. Andrew Preview" (or "Privet") on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in 1971, which involved his conducting a performance of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto with Eric Morecambe as the comically inept soloist (being swindled into it by being told that Yehudi Menuhin would be his solo violinist). "Preview" then remarks that "I'll go fetch my baton. It's in Chicago." This comic ad-lib made Morecambe immediately realise the sketch would be a success. Later in the sketch "Mr Preview" accuses Morecambe of playing all the wrong notes; Morecambe retorts that he has been playing "all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order". Because of other commitments the only time available for Previn to learn his part in the show was during a transatlantic flight but the talent he showed for comedy won high praise from his co-performers. He made a second appearance in their eighth series. In the sketch, he is tricked into visiting the pair again, and they suggest that if he works with them again, he could receive a knighthood. He conducted a 1920s-style dance band as the pair sang, then joined them at the end of the episode in singing Bring Me Sunshine. Previn also appeared in the 1972 Christmas Show, bemoaning the apparent consequences of his 1971 appearance: the only conducting work he now gets is on a London bus.

At a concert he conducted with the Grieg Concerto included in the program in Britain, Previn had to pause the playing to allow the audience time to stop giggling as they remembered the sketch. Previn himself recalled in 2005 that people in Britain still recall the sketch years later: "Taxi drivers still call me Mr Preview". He later said he was happy that the sketch meant as much to everyone else as it did to him, and that several parts of it were (uncharacteristically for Morecambe and Wise) improvised.

Personal life

Previn was married five times. His first marriage, in 1952, was to jazz singer Betty Bennett, with whom he had two daughters, Claudia Previn Stasny and Alicia Previn. Previn divorced Bennett in 1957, a few months before she gave birth to Alicia.

In 1959, he married Dory Langan. A singer-songwriter, Dory became widely known as a lyricist with whom Previn collaborated on several Academy Award-nominated film scores during their marriage. After Previn divorced her in 1969 during her hospitalization for a mental breakdown, and after Previn was caught having an affair with 23-year-old Mia Farrow, Dory resumed her career as a singer-songwriter with On My Way to Where (1970), a critically acclaimed album whose confessional lyrics were described as "searingly honest", and chronicled both her mental health struggles and the infidelity that she alleged had at once precipitated the end of her marriage to Previn and exacerbated her intermittent mental illness. In 2013, jazz singer Kate Dimbleby and pianist Naadia Sheriff revisited Dory Previn's musical reflections on her marriage to André Previn in the London cabaret show, Beware Of Young Girls: The Dory Previn Story.

Previn's third marriage, in 1970, was to Mia Farrow. Before their divorce in 1979, Previn and Farrow had three biological children together—twins Matthew and Sascha, born in 1970, and Fletcher, born in 1974. They then adopted Vietnamese infants Lark Song and Summer "Daisy" Song (born October 6, 1974), followed by Soon-Yi Previn, a Korean child whose age a physician's bone scan placed between six and eight years old and whose unknown birth date her adoptive parents estimated as October 8, 1970. Lark died on Christmas Day 2008. In the aftermath of the scandal involving Soon-Yi and Mia Farrow's partner Woody Allen, Previn said of Soon-Yi, "She does not exist."

Previn's most durable marriage was his fourth. In January 1982 he married Heather Sneddon. Previn wrote a brief memoir of his early years in Hollywood, No Minor Chords, which was published in 1991, edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and dedicated to Heather. This marriage ended in divorce after 17 years.

His fifth marriage, in 2002, was to the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, for whom in the previous year he had composed his Violin Concerto. They announced their divorce in August 2006, but continued to work together in concerts afterwards.

Honours and awards

Previn was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. He won four times, in 1958, 1959, 1963 and 1964. He is one of few composers to have accomplished the feat of winning back-to-back Oscars, and one of only two to have done so on two occasions (the other being Alfred Newman). Previn was the only person in the history of the Academy Awards to receive three nominations in one year (1961). In 1970 he was nominated for a Tony Award as part of Coco's nomination for Best Musical. In 1977 he became an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music. The 1977 television show Previn and the Pittsburgh was nominated for three Emmy awards.

Previn was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996. (Not being a citizen of a Commonwealth realm, he was permitted to use the post-nominal letters KBE but was not called "Sir André".) Previn received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 in recognition of his contributions to classical music and opera in the United States. In 2005 he was awarded the international Glenn Gould Prize and in 2008 won Gramophone magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in classical, film, and jazz music. In 2010, the Recording Academy honored Previn with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy.

Jazz Recordings

Previn made dozens of jazz recordings as both a leader and sideman, primarily during two periods of his career: from 1945 to 1967, and then again from 1989 to 2001, with just a handful of recordings in between and afterward (while he focused his career on conducting/recording classical music, and later on composing contemporary art music). Previn also did several crossover recordings with classical singers like Eileen Farrell, Leontyne Price or Kiri Te Kanawa, too, as well as several Easy-Listening records with piano and orchestra in the 1960s (beginning with Like Young. Secret Songs for Young Lovers, 1959. with David Rose and His Orchestra).

Like Oscar Peterson, whom Previn admired a great deal, and Bill Evans, Previn worked a lot as a trio pianist (usually with bass and drums). Following his performance on Shelly Manne's recording Modern Jazz Performances of Songs from My Fair Lady in 1956, Previn released several albums of jazz interpretations of songs from broadway musicals as well as several solo piano recordings focussed on the songbooks of popular composers (André Previn Plays Songs by Vernon Duke, 1958; André Previn Plays Songs by Harold Arlen, 1960; Ballads. Solo Jazz Standards, 1996; Alone: Ballads for Solo Piano, 2007), the late recording of songs by Harold Arlen with singer Sylvia McNair and bass player David Finck (Come Rain or Shine. The Harold Arlen Songbook, 1996), and his TV shows with Oscar Peterson (1974) – which Marlon Brando simply called "one of the greatest hours I ever saw on television" – and Ella Fitzgerald (1979) respectively.

Jazz critic and historian Ted Gioia wrote in his book about West Coast jazz, the scene to which Previn belonged:

[His] projects varied greatly in terms of quality and jazz content, but at his best Previn could be a persuasive, moving jazz musician. [...] Despite his deep roots in symphonic music, Previn largely steered clear of Third Stream classicism in his jazz work, aiming more at an earthy, hard-swinging piano style at times reminiscent of Horace Silver. Long before his eventual retreat from his jazz work, Previn had become something of a popularizer of jazz rather than a serious practitioner of the music. At his best, however, his music reflected a strong indigenous feel for the jazz idiom.

Death

Previn died on February 28, 2019, at home in Manhattan at the age of 89. No cause was released.

                              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Previn