Composed: 1992
Premiered: 1992, New York City
Duration: 36 minutes

André Previn’s career as a pianist, composer, and conductor spanned almost eight decades from 1943 until his death in 2019. He began composing for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios while he was still in high school, and has created music for over 50 films, netting him four Academy Awards, and he has also won 10 Grammy Awards for his film and classical music recordings. As a conductor, Previn was 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. As a classical composer, he wrote several works, including 14 concertos, numerous pieces of chamber music, two musicals, and two operas.

The song cycle Honey and Rue was originally written in 1992 for soprano Kathleen Battle with lyrics from poems by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. Commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Battle was touched by Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, and reached out to both Previn and Morrison in the hopes that they’d create a song cycle for her. The pair agreed, and thus Honey and Rue was born. According to the Chicago Tribute, the lyrics “move across a specifically black, urban, female landscape of experience.” Previn’s music combines elements from all of his major influences: film, classical, and jazz.