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Beloved French-Armenian Composer Michel Legrand Dies at 86
French-Armenian award-winning jazz musician and pianist Michel Legrand has died. He passed away at his home in France on Saturday, January 26. He was 86 years old.
Legrand started his musical education at a young age, studying at the Conservatoire de Paris with the renowned piano teacher Nadia Boulanger (who also taught such notable musicians as Phillip Glass and Aaron Copland), but
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I unfortunately did not know of Michel legrand and his great works since I’m not a jazz fan.
However, I’m very proud that an Armenian musician like Legrand recognized his roots
and acknowledged being Armenian.🇦🇲 God Bless Him, my condolences to his extended
family around the world, May he Rest In Peace…he will be missed….
Jazz? And the rest: film sound-tracks, film musicals.
Quite a guy.
If anglophone Armenians do not know Michel Legrand’s French movie scores, I am sure all will remember “The Summer of 42”.
The theme from Summer of ’42 (The Summer Knows) was composed by Michel Legrand and played several times throughout the film. See: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067803/soundtrack?ref_=tt_trv_snd
I knew that Michel Legrand was a great composer of several films musics and other creations. He is bicultural, his armenian sensibility and french deep culture, became his strong basis of the very particular music inventor. I have heard very positive comments when he passed away. I am wandering why not a single « word » was mentioned about his mother’s background of armenian. Politics have not to interfer in the beautiful world of Art !
We are all musicians in our French talking Armenian family, We all attended different “conservatoire de music” in 3 different countries: Lebanon, Armenia, and Canada, and we never heard about this great composer as having Armenian roots. This makes the difference for me with Aznavour, who was closer to his Armenian roots.
We are all musicians in our French talking Armenian family, We all attended different “conservatoire de music” in 3 different countries: Lebanon, Armenia, and Canada, and we never heard about this great composer as having Armenian roots. This makes the difference for me with Aznavour, who was closer to his Armenian roots.