Michel Legrand at Shelly's Manne Hole

First time on CD. Composed & Conduted by the legendary Legrand including his "Picasso Suite". This nostalgic coming-into-manhood fantasy features a gorgeous Oscar-winning score by Michel Legrand ("Yentl", "The Thomas Crown Affair"). Director Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird) evokes the period with double-dip ice cream cones, paddleball, saddle shoes, packages of Fels Naptha and the mist of memory in which the hero's thoughts are enwrapped. Herman Raucher's screenplay is a discerning and appreciative translation of one boy's trip along a trajectory of psychological and sexual change.

Ice Station Zebra (1968) is a Cold War thriller following a U.S. submarine and its mysterious British passenger on a top-secret mission to the North Pole. Based on a novel by Alistair MacLean, the film features fine performances by Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, Ernest Borgnine and an all-male supporting cast. The combination of realistic military protocol and high-adventure espionage—as well as groundbreaking special effects and production design—won the film many admirers, among them the late Howard Hughes. Michel Legrand was best-known for pop-based scores like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Thomas Crown Affair, but was no less creative and dynamic in the symphonic Hollywood idiom (The Three Musketeers). His score for Ice Station Zebra is at once epic yet also offbeat, with powerful main themes dressed in an intricate web of mystery and suspense. The film is first and foremost a military story, but in Legrand's hands it becomes almost like a Cold War ballet, with a polished, artistic sheen to its danger. Legrand himself provided the terrific orchestrations and conducted the 75-piece orchestra in a five-channel stereo recording.