Description: A towering figure in film and music, Michel Legrand created some of the most creative and innovative film scores of the second half of the 20th century. A prolific and highly versatile composer, Legrand worked with virtually every legendary figure in popular music and film from Maurice Chevalier to Barbra Streisand and from Orson Welles to Jean-Luc Godard. Just prior to his death at the age of 87, Legrand sat down with his longtime collaborator Stéphane Lerouge to recount many of the significant and memorable episodes from his life. Translated by Sam Taylor, this book shares Legrand's stories as told to Lerouge to English readers for the first time.
Review Quotes: "Lively and poetic." -- Tim Page, Wall Street Journal
"As you would expect from a book made up of conversations, it is like sitting down with the man for many days and just listening to him reminisce. I couldn't put it down." -- Jeffrey Sultanof, Substack"The story is not told in chronological order, however, with Legrand preferring to begin with an event unfolding in his life at the time, then moving back through his memories of particular people or places or themes. This unusual structure gives the book a liveliness and unpredictability that makes it feel less like a standard autobiography and more like a conversation." -- Arlington Heights Memorial Library"It's an essential, serious, still breezy read for anyone fascinated by one's lifelong commitment to music and cinema and the aesthetic (and business) development of both forms through trend and time, jazz and beyond." -- A.D. Amorosi, Jazz Times"Over a period of years, French producer Stephane Lerougeconducted a series of interviews with the composer that led to this delightful autobiography ..."We conceived this book as a freewheeling, emotional wander through the labyrinth of his memory, following a thread between past and present," Lerouge writes in the foreword. "Michel spoke the book, I wrote it; the content is his, the form mine," he explains." -- Jon Burlingame, The Score"French composer and multihyphenate Michel Legrand occupied a unique position in the annals of music. Classically schooled in the wake of Igor Stravinsky's groundbreaking modernism, Legrand came of age in the era of both trendsetting jazz and the Hollywood studio symphony. A Life in Music and Film consists of a number of Legrand's autobiographical reminiscences that have been eloquently stitched together by collaborator Stephane Lerouge." -- Sean Wilson, BBC Music Magazine