The French composer Michel Legrand died in the night at the age of 86 years, announced his press officer to the AFP.
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He was the composer of the young girls of Rochefort , but also concertos for piano and cello. He has composed the music for over 200 films.
It had received three oscars for The Thomas Crown Affair , summer of 42 and Yentl.
the minister of Culture, Franck Riester, expressed to him his «great emotion at the announcement of the disappearance of Michel Legrand». «A composer of genius, his inexhaustible talent, celebrated everywhere in the world, has given birth to so many emotions. This morning we fredonnons a look of Michel Legrand. Thoughts moved to his wife and relatives,» he added on Twitter. On France Info, the pianist and composer André Manoukian has entrusted to us Saturday morning to have «lost master». Michel Legrand, he continued, was «not only a composer of extraordinary, but also an arranger without peer (…)». «He managed the miracle of making each of his songs a jewel.»
Legrand has been one of the musicians most active in the genre, lending his science harmonic to directors such as Marcel Carné, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Louis Malle, and many others.
In 1964, his work on The Umbrellas of Cherbourg opened him the doors of Hollywood. There he spent fifteen years, The Thomas Crown Affair, and its theme, The Mills of my heart , one of his greatest successes, to Never ever , which marked the return of Sean Connery in the role of secret agent 007. «I found it funny to have a James Bond in my wallet» we admitted it in 2009.
Legrand has accompanied several revolutions musicales. Jazz first, working with masters of the caliber of Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald. The rock’n’roll then. Accompanying Maurice Chevalier, New York in 1956, he brought with him some discs of Elvis Presley to his friends Henri Salvador and Boris Vian, who were involved with him in an adaptation of a parody of the genre under the title Rock And Roll Mops .
The musician and jack-of-all had installed his studio in the parisian district of the Marais. «Since I was a child, my ambition has been to live completely surrounded by music. My dream was not to miss anything. This is why I never fixed on a single musical discipline,» he explained.
«I don’t make a career. I try all the musical disciplines with a lot of serious and working. But I am trying, I am still a student, î he told in 2009.
the Father of three children, the composer at the voice, slightly veiled, and the bushy eyebrows, had married his third wife, the actress Macha Méril in 2014.
He had to give concerts in Paris in April.
» I love to travel, I’m going to try to spend my life in travel, at least a good part … «, told it in 1956 at the age of 26 years, in a video available on the site of the ina.