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RIP Michel Legrand


Faleel

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Tragic news tonight. We have lost the legendary Michel Legrand. (1924-2019) Such a genius and gift to all of us and to music! Absolutely heartbroken.

 

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2 hours ago, JTWfan77 said:

That's sad. Weren't he and Williams friends?

I believe Legrand was a pianist on several of Williams' scores, Presumed Innocent comes to mind...

 

 

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Very sad news.  I was so lucky to see Michel Legrand for the first and sadly now the only time with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in September.  It was a really great concert.  Although he did look every one of his eighty-six years when he shuffled out onto the stage, as soon as he sat at the piano the years rolled away.  Incidentally, I think they have his birth year wrong in the original post (he was born in 1932 in the same month as John Williams).

 

Apologies for my trademark blurriness, but here is a photo of Legrand with conductor Paul Bateman and the RPO at his recent concert.

 

DSC02782.JPG

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10 minutes ago, Richard said:

Aw, man, this is bad. I love his score for ICE STATION ZEBRA.

 

That's a great score (and film), even if it's quite challenging on its own! I did a Cinema Club entry on it at FSM many years ago.

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In my estimation, he wrote one of the greatest and most unforgettable themes in cinema history...

 

 

And his genius for scoring is evident in Cherbourg, specially the famous finale.

 

 

Watch out for the main theme kicks in at about the 2 minute point. Devastating.

 

Great career. So many beautiful melodies. An almost unparalleled sense of romanticism in film scores.

 

RIP

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14 hours ago, Thor said:

I posted this video before, but here it is again; Williams conducting and Legrand performing on piano, in an old Boston Pops concert:

 

 

 

I have been very lucky to have recorded this video in 1997/1998 i think (not sure) on My VCR. Back then , the onyx german channel was posting some of the boston pops show kind of in "loop" mode, but unfortunatly didn't posted all of them. 

they did 4  tunes on this concert but the 3 other tunes that i tried to post at the same time have been removed by youtube. certainly because of the third guest, tonny benett. i'll try to repost ithem again, hoping that youtube will not block the videos this time.

 

I studied Jazz piano 24 years ago with one of Legrand's session Pianist. It was for the movie "3 places pour le 26". it was featuring actress Mathilda may some years after she did "Lifeforce".

It was a musical, from Jacques demy, featuring Yves montand as the main actor and of course, Michel to compose the soundtrack. they tried to re-produce the success of the "parapluies de Cherbourg", but it didn't worked at all.

A bluray of this movie is available in france. My (ex) teacher (i only had one piano teacher in my life) plays the piano in one of the scene, and was the one who was taking care of all the rehearsal with the dancers and singers for the screen.

I know some anecdotes on michel and the production of this movie from my teacher's mouth, but for personnal reason, I'll not share them sorry. i

I don't think it must be known the day he passed away.

 

I'll come back here to post the link to the THREE (!!!) other videos once they will be uploaded (and i hope, not blocked).

 

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As promised here are the tunes 2, 3 and 4 of John Williams conducting Michel Legrand and tony bennett on vocals. I tried my best, as I posted this without checking the audio of it (hearing issues) so i hope they are ok. if there is an issue, please let me know.

the video is of course not in HD but I uploaded it in HD to force youtube to encode the Audio track in the highest quality possible. As said, Couldn't hear the audio, but I know that on the first song, if my memory is correct, they play one of the tune from the parapluies de cherbourg, so if someone here can tell me and identify the song name from the three videos, thank you !

 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Thor said:

Thanks for the extra clips, Marty. When is the concert from? 1990-ish?

 

Miguel (who is on this forum and provided me some of the clips i posted from JW on my channel (but not these ones) tell here that it's from 1992.

 

http://www.grandorchestras.com/bostonpops/video/bpops_evening92legrand.html

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