Oscar-Winning 'My Fair Lady' Composer Andre Previn Dies at 89

It had been reported that Oscar-winning composer Andre Previn has passed away at the age of [...]

It had been reported that Oscar-winning composer Andre Previn has passed away at the age of 89.

According to NPR, Previn's manager Linda Petrikova confirmed that the "celebrated musical polymath" died in his Manhattan home on Thursday morning.

Throughout his career, Previn won four Oscars, which included one for his contributions to the My Fair Lady film. Additionally, he won 10 Grammys for his film, jazz and classical recordings, and was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement trophy in 2009.

In a past interview with NPR, Previn spoke about his time as a young man honing his craft, and shared how her grew to love being a composer.

"There was one of those huge silent epics which kept vacillating allegorically between Biblical times and the Roaring Twenties, and so I really had to pay attention. But I noticed that each time they switched venues, as it were, it would stay there for a while. So we came out of a Biblical time and back into people Charleston-ing their life away," he said at the time.

"And I thought, 'Well, I'm safe for a few minutes.' And so I started playing 'Tiger Rag,' and I heard a commotion in the audience, and the manager was storming down the aisle. And I took a quick look up on the screen — and I was playing 'Tiger Rag' to the Crucifixion, which was a bad choice. And I was out on the pavement about three minutes later," he added.

Pulitzer-prize-winning music critic Tim Page — who is also a professor of journalism and music at the University of Southern California — has spoken fondly of Previn, saying, "He really seriously distinguished himself in a lot of different fields. He was not one of these people who came in and shook up one field forever and ever."

"As good as some of his high-classical music was," Page later added. "I'm not sure he ever did any better work than he did as a jazz pianist and writing for film. And there's no disgrace in that whatsoever — I think [it's] really good jazz piano. And he was so musical, and so lyrical and so inventive — it's a real accomplishment."

At this time, Previn's cause of death does not appear to be reported, as NPR does not cite whether or not Petrikova shared that information when announcing his passing.

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