‘I want to be a man without any past,” says Michel Legrand, who has perhaps the longest past in showbiz. Orchestrator, pianist, conductor, composer of countless soundtracks, who else has collaborated as widely - with Miles Davis and Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbra Streisand and Jean-Luc Godard, Gene Kelly, Joseph Losey and Edith Piaf?

On his mantelpiece in his splendid classical manoir 60 miles south of Paris, four familiar gilt statuettes stand sentry. The oldest is for Windmills of My Mind, the best original song of 1965. But there are no recordings.

“I don’t want to be tempted to listen to one which was a success and try to do it again,” he explains. “Also, I don’t want to listen to an old record and say, ‘Jesus God, how could I write such - - - -?’”

At 75 Legrand is about to unveil his first stage musical. Marguerite is based on Dumas’s La Dame aux Camélias, the inexhaustible source of La Traviata, Marguerite and Armand, Greta Garbo’s Camille and Moulin Rouge.” Continue reading…

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