Michel Legrand at Shelly's Manne Hole

This high-quality outing (reissued on CD) features composer Michel Legrand faring quite well as a jazz pianist. He performs six of his compositions (only "Pieces of Dream" is well-known) with a lyrical septet also including altoist Phil Woods (doubling on clarinet), tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims, trumpeter Joe Wilder, guitarist Gene Bertoncini, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Grady Tate. The music generally swings, has plenty of fine melodic solos, and gives listeners a taste of some fresh Legrand material.

This high-quality outing features composer Michel Legrand faring well as a jazz pianist. The music swings, the Big Band is in outstanding form, has plenty of fine melodic solos, and gives listeners a taste of some fresh Legrand material.

Legrand has composed more than two hundred film and television scores and several musicals and has made well over a hundred albums. He has won three Oscars and five Grammys and has been nominated for an Emmy. He was 22 when his first album, I Love Paris, became one of the best-selling instrumental albums ever released. He is a virtuoso jazz and classical pianist and an accomplished arranger and conductor who performs with orchestras all over the world. He studied music at the Paris Conservatoire from 1943 to 1950, working with, among others, Nadia Boulanger, who also taught many other composers, including Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, and Ástor Piazzolla. Legrand graduated with top honors as both a composer and a pianist.

Before this French jazz man made his name writing for films (and before his famous Legrand Jazz with Miles and Coltrane), he broke through with his 1954 tribute to his native city, I Love Paris . Here's that classic plus his portraits of Rome and Vienna; includes Autumn Leaves; Paris in the Spring; The Song from Moulin Rouge; Non Dimenticar; Luna Rossa; Funiculi Funicula; Tales from the Vienna Woods; Artist's Life Waltz; The Merry Widow Waltz , and more.Michel Legrand was the most inventive of any orchestrator working at that time. His genius is evident through-out, absolutely gorgeous music. This is what you expect to hear when you visit these countries.

One of the finest jazz musicians born in Switzerland, altoist George Robert has long considered his main influences to be Charlie Parker and Phil Woods. He started on piano when he was eight, and clarinet at ten, playing with a family band that included his four brothers. Robert switched permanently to alto as a teenager. In 1980, he moved to the United States to study at Berklee, settling in New York in 1985. Robert recorded his first album that year (for his GPR label), and in 1987, formed a quintet that he co-led with trumpeter Tom Harrell on and off through 1992. George Robert, who has toured with Clark Terry, has recorded many albums as a leader for Contemporary, TCB, Mons, and Jazz Focus.

Foreign Affair is a 1958 album by Frankie Laine with the orchestra of Michel Legrand. High Fidelity commented that "Frankie Laine throbs his breathy way through an international potpourri in five languages — all marked with a heavy American accent." The album was followed by a second collaboration with Legrand the next year, Reunion in Rhythm.