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Michel Legrand
It is difficult to pin the multi-talented Michel Legrand down into one single category. This amazingly versatile French singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, conductor and producer has enjoyed a whirlwind career, excelling in an impressively broad range of domains from film soundtracks and French 'chanson' to jazz and classical music. An international star, who has won as much respect in the States as he has in Europe, Legrand is an insatiable musician whose creativity and ambition appear to know no bounds.
Michel Legrand was born in Bécon-les-Bruyères, in the Paris suburbs, on 24 February 1932. His mother, Marcelle der Mikaelian, married Raymond Legrand, a French musician renowned for hits such as "Irma la douce." Michel spent a rather solitary childhood, growing up with his sister, Christiane. He revealed a prodigious musical talent at an early age, playing the piano when he was just four years old. As a child, he was fascinated about the life of composer Franz Schubert. Michel eventually went on to train at the Paris Conservatoire in 1942. He spent seven years there, studying under renowned teachers such as Nadia Boulanger, Henri Challan, Noël Gallon and Lucette Descaves. The young prodigy went on to win numerous awards for his skills in counterpoint, piano, fugue and 'solfège' (an award he received on 6 June 1944).
In the immediate post-war years, Michel Legrand discovered a new passion: jazz. The moment that triggered off this musical conversion was when he attended a concert by Dizzy Gillespie " and left, totally blown away by what he had seen! By the time he graduated from the Conservatoire in 1949, Legrand had mastered a dozen instruments. And he found himself launched straight into the world of French 'chanson,' thanks to introductions from his father (with whom he had renewed ties by this point). The gifted teenager was soon working as an accompanist to many of the major French stars of the day including Henri Salvador, Juliette Gréco, Zizi Jeanmaire and Catherine Sauvage.
In 1954, Legrand stepped from the accompanying shadows centre stage when the American record label Columbia-EMI commissioned him to make an album of English adaptations of French classics. The album "I Love Paris" went on to sell a staggering 8 million copies, turning Legrand into an overnight star both at home and abroad. It was at this point that legendary French 'chanson' star Maurice Chevalier approached Legrand and offered him a post as his musical director. Legrand accepted and, in Chevalier's company, flew across the Atlantic, discovering the States in the course of numerous tours.
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Michel Legrand: Hollywood Hitmaker And Jazz Genius
by Chris May
For many jazz fans, Michel Legrand is celebrated, if he is celebrated at all, for one album only: the masterpiece Legrand Jazz (Columbia, 1958). But Legrand's jazz legacy is more extensive than that, including other historic recordings, with large and small ensembles, under his own name and by Stan Getz and Phil Woods, whose Images (RCA, 1975) is regarded by some listeners as Woods' most perfect album. Legrand began his career in Paris in the early 1950s, ...
Continue ReadingMichel Legrand: Legrand Jazz
by Patrick Burnette
Michel LeGrand is best known for his long and fruitful career in movie soundtracks, but as a young man in 1958 he was featured in an arranger's showcase with a collection of jazz masters, including Ben Webster, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Miles Davis. Columbia Records in 1958 had an unparalleled roster to offer the young French phenom; the label also had the studio chops to make the result an audiophile treasure sixty years later (Impex Records reissued ...
Continue ReadingMichel Legrand At Birdland
by AAJ Staff
Michel Legrand Birdland New York City February 26-March 2, 2008
Legendary French master composer and pianist Michel Legrand recently played Birdland in New York City with his trio. Well, it wasn't really his trio: on bass was the great Ron Carter (Miles Davis' second great quartet) and, a la batterie, the redoubtable Lewis Nash. Legrand, who has played duets with Oscar Peterson, said how honored he was to play with great American jazz ...
Continue ReadingYoung Girls of Rochefort, 1967
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
What better way to start the new year than watching a pristine print of The Young Girls of Rochefort? Directed by Jacques Demy, the music was composed by Michel Legrand to Demy's lyrics, and the choreography was by Norman Maen. It was a followup to Demy and Legrand's Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). The film-musical takes place in Rochefort, an actual town along the west coast of France. During the summer of '66, a caravan of trucks arrives in the town ...
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Five Michel Legrand Duets
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
For some reason, I felt like hearing the music of Michel Legrand yesterday, but I couldn't figure out why. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that with snow falling here, the ending scene from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (above) were likely projecting on the walls of my mind. Movies aside, here are five fabulous duet performances with Michel Legrand... Here's Legrand and Tony Bennett in 1982... Here's Legrand and Kuh Ledesma, a wonderful Filipina pop ...
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Once Upon a Summertime
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
One of the most difficult songs to sing well is Once Upon Summertime. Written in 1954 by Michel Legrand, French music producer Eddie Barclay and French songwriter Eddy Marnay, the slow waltz originally was entitled La Valse des Lilas (or The Lilac Waltz). In the late 1950s, the song was given English lyrics by Johnny Mercer to make the melody accessible to singers in the American and English markets. Blossom Dearie was first to record the song with Mercer's words ...
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Michel Legrand (1932-2019)
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Michel Legrand, a French pianist who began writing arrangements for jazz musicians in the early 1950s before becoming one of the new sophisticated sentimentalists of American film in the 1960s and beyond as a composer, arranger and conductor, died on January 26. He was 86. Legraand's jazz recordings began with Dizzy Gillespie and the Paris Operatic Strings in Paris in 1953 and then Blossom Dearie and Les Blue Stars mid-decade. His jazz turning point came in June 1958 when he ...
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Michel Legrand, 1932-2019
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Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Michel Legrand, the pianist, arranger and prolific composer of film scores, died today at his home in France. He was 86. Dozens of Legrand’s melodies became popular hits, among them “The Windmills OfYour Mind,” “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?” and “Watch What Happens.” The wide range of performers who collaborated with him includes such diverse stars as Miles Davis, Barbara Streisand and Kiri Te Kanawa. Early on, Legrand was the piano accompanist for Sarah Vaughan and ...
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Legrand Plays Richard Rodgers
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
In the 1950s, everyone in jazz and pop was sweet on Richard Rodgers. Many of the composer's highly melodic songs were easy to sing and leverage for swinging interpretations. Whether they were written with Lorenz Hart or Oscar Hammerstein II, Rodgers' love songs sounded hip without trying, becoming perfect vessels into which musicians could add their own ingredients. While there were many small-group and vocal albums of Rodgers' music in the 1950s and '60s, only three big bands recorded instrumental ...
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French Jazz Pianist Michel Legrand at Regattabar in Cambridge on April 6
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MassJazz: Jazz in Massachusetts
French composer, singer and pianist Michel Legrand is performing with his trio at the Regattabar Jazz Club at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts on Wednesday, April 6, 2011. Tickets are$38.00 and can be purchased online. Legrand won five Grammy Awards for his compositions and was nominated 27 times during his illustrious career. Among them were the sound tracks to the Thomas Crowne Affair, the Summer of 42, Yentl and Never Say Never. He is performing at Regattabar ...
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Michel Legrand's 50th Anniversary Concert Tribute
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Michael Ricci
MGM Grand, Valencia Entertainment, and City Lights Productions UK announced today that three-time Oscar and five-time Grammy Award-winner Michel Legrand will perform a tribute to his 50 years of music and movies at the MGM Grand Garden Arena Saturday, March 27. Over the course of his 50-year career, Legrand has composed more than 200 film and television scores as well as several musicals. Legrand was only 22 years old when his first album, I Love Paris, became one of the ...
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Michel Legrand, the Pianist and Composer, is Making a Rare New York Appearance at Birdland.
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Michael Ricci
Take Many Textures, Then Mix Together A 77-year-old child prodigy with bushy eyebrows and the heart of an adolescent swooning at his first exposure to Rachmaninoff: that describes the sensibility of Michel Legrand, the French jazz pianist and composer and multiple Oscar winner who is playing a rare New York engagement at Birdland, accompanied by a string quartet, harp, bass and drums.
This unwieldy mixture of classical, jazz and Hollywood is built around pianism that suggests a steep ...
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Michel Legrand at Birdland February 26th Sets at 8:30PM & 11PM
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Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services
3-time Oscar winner! 5-time Grammy winner! Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Pianist, and Vocalist: Michel Legrand with Legendary Jazz Bassist RON CARTER and drummer LEWIS NASH Tuesday, February 26th through Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 Showtimes @ 8:30pm & 11pm Produced by Pat Philips & Ettore Stratta BIRDLAND 315 West 44th Street (btwen 8th & 9th avenue) Tickets: (212) 581-3080 Virtuoso pianist, arranger, conductor, producer, singer, Oscar and Grammy ...
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