Michel Legrand - composer, songwriter, singer

We describe many composers on mfiles as having been child prodigies, but how else would you describe someone who entered the Paris Conservatory at 9 years of age, studying with Nadia Boulanger. Michel Legrand's musical inclinations were always towards song-writing and he was a singer himself. Following the success of his first album "I Love Paris" he went on to work with many of the great Jazz names such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane on his next album "Legrand Jazz". When he moved into film work, it was no surprise that he was able to bring these skills into play not only in writing movie songs but also in composing orchestral material with a strong lyrical feel. In "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" all the dialogue is actually sung in this unusual film (and it was the first French musical to be shot in colour). Many of his films are French language ones (e.g. some from director Jean-Luc Godard) but there are also a number of well-known English language movies such as "The Thomas Crown Affair" (with its theme "The Windmills of Your Mind"), "Summer of '42" and "Yentl" with Barbra Streisand.

Yet despite this particular focus to his career, Legrand also created a number of instrumental film scores such as "Ice Station Zebra", a cold war thriller based on an Alistair MacLean novel. This has a theme suggesting a great seafaring adventure but quite a lot of unconventional material too. The film uses a lot of extreme almost alien environments (in the submarine, on the ice, beneath the ice and satallite shots in space) and the music depicts these strange locations and uses this material to heighten the suspense and drama among the cast of spies and military men.

Although he has not been active as a film composer for several years and is now in his mid-70s, this year (2008) sees the premiere in London of "Marguerite", Legrand's new stage musical created with the help of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (who also created "Les Misérables" and "Miss Saigon"). This musical is based on Dumas' novel "La Dame aux Camélias".

Films by Michel Legrand:

• Une Femme Est une Femme
• Lola
• Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrella's of Cherbourg) - music, song and voice and Oscar nominations for best music and best song, a typically French melancholy love song
• Pretty Polly
• Ice Station Zebra - highly recommended for its mix of moods and styles
• The Thomas Crown Affair - with the aforementioned "Windmills of Your Mind" winning the best song Oscar and illustrating the cycle of complex machinations. Bill Conti scored the recent remake.
• The Happy Ending - the title should give this away as a romantic movie, with slow lyrical themes and the song "What are you doing the rest of your life?" with lyricist duo Alan & Marilyn Bergman
• The Picasso Summer
• Pieces of Dreams
• Wuthering Heights (1970)
• Summer of '42 - best music Oscar, the theme being a wistful one moving between minor and major keys
• Lady Sings the Blues
• The Three Musketeers
• Le Sauvage
• The Smurfs and The Magic Flute
• Gulliver's Travels (1977)
• Falling in Love Again
• Bolero
• Best Friends
• The Gift
• Never Say Never Again - song and incidental music for this different Bond film
• Yentl - song material, music, music director and best song score Oscar
• Eternity

Recommendations:

Some of Legrand's orchestral work is hard to find on CD, but it's certainly possible to find the song material such as "The Windmills of Your Mind" and "Summer of '42" in various forms. "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" is available from Amazon.com.