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Michel Legrand – What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life (Easy Guitar partition, sheet music)

Michel Legrand

Michel Legrand is a three-time Oscar-winning French composer, conductor and pianist. He has composed more than 200 film and television scores and recorded more than a hundred albums of jazz, popular and classical music.

He was born on February 24, 1932 in Bécon-les-Bruyères, in the suburbs of Paris, France. His father, Raymond Legrand, was a French composer and actor. His mother, Marcelle der Mikaelian, was from the Armenian bourgeoisie. From 1942 to 1949, the young Legrand studied piano at the Paris Conservatory. There, his teachers were Nadia Boulanger and Henri Challan among other renowned musicians. He received numerous awards for his compositional and piano skills and mastered a dozen other instruments.

In 1947, he attended a Dizzy Gillespie concert and caught the jazz virus. He begins to work as a pianist for great French singers. He eventually collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie on several albums and film scores.

In 1954, Legrand became an overnight star after his album ‘I Love Paris’ became a hit, selling over 8 million copies. He followed success with albums such as ‘Holiday in Rome’ (1955) and ‘Michel Legrand Plays Cole Porter’ (1957).

In 1958 he was invited to play at the Festival of Students and Youth in Moscow. There, in Moscow, he meets his future wife, a young French model with whom he will have three children.

At the end of the 1950s and 1960s, Legrand was overtaken by the French New Wave. He composed seven films for Jean-Luc Godard, he also made ten films with Jacques Demy, and became responsible for the creation of the musical genre in French cinema. In 1963, Legrand made The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), the first entirely sung musical film. For this film score, he received three Oscar nominations. Its hauntingly beautiful melody, ‘I Will Wait For You’, was nominated for Best Original Song.

In 1966, Legrand decided to try his luck in Hollywood and moved to Los Angeles with his wife and three children. His friendship with Quincy Jones and Hank Mancini helped him a lot, especially when he met lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman. In 1969 Legrand won his first Academy Award for Best Score, Original Song for ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ and was also nominated for Best Score, Original Score for a Motion Picture for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

Eventually, Legrand became a star in the United States, he received twelve Oscar nominations and won two more Oscars. He was nominated for a Grammy 27 times and received 5 Grammys in the 1970s.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Legrand continued to perform live concerts with his own jazz trio. He also led his big band which he made several international tours, accompanying stars such as Ray Charles, Diana Ross, Björk, and Stéphane Grappelli who celebrated his 85th birthday in 1992.

He has also recorded several classical albums, including a genre cross-hit album entitled ‘Kiri Sings Michel Legrand’ with opera singer Kiri te Kanawa. During the 2000s, Legrand worked mainly in the studio and also toured internationally.

In 2005, a compilation of Legrand’s best-known film soundtracks was released under the title ‘Le Cinéma de Michel Legrand’, including 90 songs composed during his career.

The Happy Ending

The triumphs and failures of middle age seen through the eyes of runaway American housewife Mary Wilson (Jean Simmons), a woman who believes that the ultimate reality exists beyond the routine procedures of everyday life, conscious and uninspired. She feels cheated by an older generation who taught her to settle for nothing less than storybook endings, disillusioned and restless people who don’t know why, people for whom life offers no easy answers.

Excellent supporting actors include John Forsythe, Teresa Wright, Lloyd Bridges, Shirley Jones, Bobby Darin, Tina Louise, Dick Shawn and Nanette Fabray.

Lyrics of the song: “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life”

What are you doing the rest of your life
North and South and
East and West of your life
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me
All the seasons and the times of your days
Are the nickels and the dimes of your days
Let the reasons and the rhymes of your days
All begin and end with me

I want to see your face in every kind of light
In fields of gold and forests of the night
And when you stand
Before the candles on a cake
Oh, let me be the one to hear
The silent wish you make

Those tomorrows waiting deep in your eyes
In a world of love you keep in your eyes
I’ll awaken what’s asleep in your eyes
It may take a kiss or two

Through all of my life
Summer, winter, spring and fall of my life
All I ever will recall of my life
Is all my life with you

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