Michel Legrand, Jazz

On February 28, 1948, jazz entered the life of Michel Legrand: sixteen years old, he attended two concerts by Dizzy Gillespie Salle Pleyel. For him, it is a break, an intimate border. Be bop, he summed up, I love him with my reason, my brain, my technique. But I also love him physically. Bach or Ravel is my mother tongue;jazz is my first living language.” As an extension of his incandescent collaborations with Miles Davis, Stan Getz or Phil Woods, and especially with his 1963 album homage to Richard Rodgers, Michel Legrand set up an exceptional big band in 1993. Like a torrent of voluptuousness, it will offer both swing rereads of the master’s classics… and original compositions, specially carved by Michel Legrand for thirteen abrasive and rhythmic brass.