On February 24, 1932, a Franco-Armenian child named Michel was born in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. Dad is French, he is a musician, arranger and composer; Mom is Armenian, she is not a musician but uncle Jacques Hélian has led a famous big band since the 1930s and until after the war.
From childhood, Michel showed exceptional musical abilities: he refused to go to school to stay at home in the company of the old piano left by his father who deserted the family home. At the age of four, he listened to songs on the radio and reproduced them on the keyboard, accompanying them with first harmonies. We marvel at his precocious virtuosity, mother plans to produce it at fairgrounds to make ends meet. His piano teacher was outraged and demanded that the young prodigy be brought to the Conservatory.
There, it’s a revelation, all the enthusiasm: the instruments, the music theory, the counterpoint and the fugue. His rapid progress led him to the class of excellence of “Mademoiselle”, the formidable Nadia Boulanger to whom Michel would be grateful all his life for the rigor and discipline of her teaching.
But one day he attends a Dizzy Gillespie concert which upsets him. The discovery of jazz revealed to him new horizons that “Mademoiselle” disapproved of, but which will structure his work forever.
Soon the cinema opened up to him, first with Godard, then with Jacques Demy, with unforgettable masterpieces like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort and Peau d’Âne. Then comes the American adventure and its three Oscars for A Summer of 42, The Thomas Crown Affair and Yentl.
With limitless curiosity, he draws inspiration from all styles and practices music as an antidote to the darkness of existence. His music helps us live, energizes, enchants.
Michel Legrand left us in January 2019, on the cusp of his 87th birthday, in full activity and overflowing with projects, notably that of a film music festival, which became the Michel Legrand Prize, awarded each year in June during an evening of concert in the house where he lived the last ten years of his life.
We can say that he was a man-music, a man-life, a child's heart eternally curious about tomorrow.
