Michel Legrand

Composer

“My father had left behind an old piano. My sister was already going to school, my mother was out working, and I stayed at home alone with my adorable grandmother who understood nothing I said. It was so boring that I stayed at the piano all day long, and that saved my life.”

Biography

The son of French composer Raymond Legrand, Michel Legrand studied at the Paris Conservatory before launching a career as a singer/bandleader. A film composer from the late ‘50s, Legrand scored his first international hit with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), a fond throwback to the airy Rene Clair musicals of the ’30s. Legrand’s style was usually described as “haunting,” with emphasis on minor-key orchestrations and liberal usage of violins. He won Academy Awards for his work on The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) (which yielded the hit song “Windmills of My Mind”), Summer of ’42 (1972) and Barbra Streisand’s Yentl (1983), which like Umbrellas of Cherbourg was virtually wall-to-wall music. Much of Legrand’s subsequent work has been unremarkable, tending to rely upon what had been successful in his past compositions. In 1989, Michel Legrand made his film directing bow with the semi-autobiographical Five Days in June. Eleven years earlier, an… read more

Michel Legrand

Composer

“My father had left behind an old piano. My sister was already going to school, my mother was out working, and I stayed at home alone with my adorable grandmother who understood nothing I said. It was so boring that I stayed at the piano all day long, and that saved my life.”

Biography

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