ABSTRACT
A child prodigy, Michel Legrand (1932–2019) started playing piano at the age of four. He entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1943 at eleven, studying for seven years with pedagogues including Nadia Boulanger, winning prizes in counterpoint, piano, fugue, and solfège. At the end of the Second World War, still in school, Legrand discovered American-style jazz at a Dizzy Gillespie concert. When Legrand left conservatory in 1949 at 17, he could play a dozen instruments (RFI Musique 2005). He was drawn irresistibly to jazz; he became a virtuoso pianist who could convincingly imitate the greats from Fats Waller to Oscar Peterson, and who could scat sing respectably too.
