Michel Legrand. In Memoriam

Composer, arranger, conductor, singer, jazz pianist ... it's difficult to understate the versatility and importance of Michel Legrand's (1932-2019) legacy to this and the last century's music. The very different news outlets which report his death are proof of his transversality: Newspapers, Entertainment and Arts magazines, music magazines, film music blogs, jazz magazines ...

Legrand has won three Oscars (out of 13 nominations), five Grammys and was nominated for an Emmy. His music is indelibly associated with some of the best films of Jean-Luc Godard (Une femme est une femme, Bande à part), Agnès Varda (Cleo de 5 à 7) or Jacques Demy (Lola and the unforgettable diptych Les parapluies de Cherbourg and Les demoiselles de Rochefort). He collaborated with great directors like Orson Welles (in F for Fake, or the recent release of the incomplete The Other Side of the Wind), Norman Jewison (The Thomas Crown Affair), Joseph Losey (The Go-Between), Robert Mulligan (Summer of '42), Louis Malle (Atlantic City) or Yentl (Barbra Streisand).

He loved playing his music live and toured incessantly all around the world with jazz and orchestral formations. Those who have been lucky enough to see him live know of his haunting capacity to hypnotize the audience.

In 1970, he composed the soundtrack of Wuthering Heights, directed by Robert Fuest and was nominated to a Golden Globe award. The same year the soundtrack was released by American International Pictures on LP. The next year, Columbia re-released the vinyl in Japan with a different cover. La-La Land Records re-released the soundtrack (with a previously unreleased vocal track: I Was Born in Love with You) on CD. Quoting from the sleeve:

You may hear in this album musical thoughts unlike any that you have heard before. You will be asked to dream dreams and suffer shocks beyond those you thought possible in music. Legrand will show with you the inner things which cannot be said with words. (Julian Myers)

In 2018, as the 1200-limited La-La Land edition was very hard to find,  Notefornote Music released a new limited edition (700 CD copies and 200 transparent purple vinyls).

In 2000, the great soprano Jessye Norman released an album of jazzy covers of Michel Legrand's songs. The name of the album was I Was Born in Love with You and this was its title track: