Michel Legrand

Michel Legrand was a prodigious French musical composer, arranger, conductor, jazz pianist, and vocalist whose career spanned more than seven decades. Born in Paris on 24 February 1932 to a family steeped in musical tradition—his father Raymond Legrand was a celebrated conductor and his mother Marcelle Der‑Mikaëlian came from an Armenian lineage—Legrand entered the Conservatoire de Paris at age eleven, studying under Nadia Boulanger and graduating with top honors in both composition and piano. He burst onto the international scene at the tender age of twenty‑two when his album I Love Paris became an unexpected hit, establishing his reputation not only as a composer but also as a versatile jazz pianist who collaborated with legends such as Miles Davis and Stan Getz. Over the course of his life he wrote more than two hundred film and television scores, a catalog that includes iconic works for Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), the haunting theme “The Windmills of Your Mind” for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and the tender melodies of Summer of ’42 (1971) and Barbra Streisand’s Yentl (1983). His music often blended lush orchestration with jazz idioms, forging a distinctive sound that earned him three Academy Awards, five Grammy Awards, and a reputation as one of the most influential film composers of the twentieth century. In addition to his film work, Legrand ventured into musical theatre, composing the score for Le Passe‑muraille (1997) and its Broadway incarnation Amour (2002), for which he received a Tony nomination. He continued to perform and record until his death from sepsis on 26 January 2019, leaving a legacy that still resonates in cinemas, concert halls, and the hearts of listeners worldwide.