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Legrand, Michel

Category: Musician or composer

Michel Jean Legrand (born 24 February 1932) is a French musical composer, arranger and conductor. He is also a virtuoso jazz and classical pianist.

Legrand is a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores in addition to many memorable songs. Many of his best known compositions are haunting film and musical scores in the minor key. If anyone has his door of perception permanently open, it is Michel Legrand. He may even be on the other side looking in on us. What you are hearing in his music is the very archetype of celestial music - songlines.

Examples of his songs include "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964) , “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968) featuring the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" for which he won his first Academy Award, and “Papa can you hear me” from the film Yentl. The Summer of '42 (1971), features another haunting song, "The Summer Knows." Legrand also wrote the score for Orson Welles's last-completed film, F for Fake (1974).

Legrand has also contributed significant work in jazz, collaborating with such musicians as Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Jazz is one method of music making in which true spiritual input can be expressed – inspiration made immediately audible -  as such Legrand's involvement in jazz [like another classical musician Nigel Kennedy] is especially interesting.

He collaborated with violinist Stephane Grappelli on an album in 1992. His jazz piano style is described as “virtuosic and eclectic”.

Legrand was born in Bécon les Bruyères, near Paris, France. His father Raymond Legrand was a conductor and composer renowned for hits such as Irma la Douce, and his mother was Marcelle Der Mikaëlian (sister of conductor Jacques Hélian), who married Legrand Senior in 1929. His maternal grandfather was of Armenian descent. His sister, Christiane Legrand, was a member of the Swingle Singers, and his niece Victoria Legrand is a member of the indie rock duo Beach House, as such I think we can say that inherited genes play a very large part in his and his family's spiritual abilities.


Legrand with his wife Catherine


Then began a collaboration that was to prove extraordinarily fruitful for Legrand, that with lyric writer Jacques Demy. The first fruit of their labour was les Parapluies de Cherbourg, an opera in modern style and essentially a love story; but Legrand continued to set Jacques Demy’s imaginative lyrics to music ( Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Peau d’âne, Trois places pour le 26 ), and then rather abruptly Legrand moved to Los Angeles in 1968 for what he called “a change of scene”. We know no more.



Harpist Catherine Michel, to whom Michel Legrand´s
"Harp Concerto" is dedicated

In America, Michel Legrand’s association and long standing friendship with Alan and Marilyn Bergman has given rise to scores of great numbers, usually theme songs ( The Summer Knows, How Do You Keep The Music Playing? and The Way He Makes Me Feel).

After more than 45 years of composing, and in his 80s, Michel Legrand is still composing and still innovating.



There is a good playlist of the songs from Wuthering heights whose score has an ethereal haunting quality about it, very much in keeping with the book.  This 1970 version of the classic Bronte tragedy was directed by Robert Fuest and starred Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder- Marshall as the ill fated Heathcliffe and Catherine.

This LINK takes you to a youtube video of Catherine his wife playing harp with Michel conducting un été 42.


