The 1st edition of the Michel Legrand Prize takes place on Saturday.

Macha Méril, actress, producer, novelist and wife of Michel Legrand, was the guest of Europe 1, Friday, to discuss this award that she created to reward musicians and composers of musical shows and film scores.

INTERVIEW

She shared the life of Michel Legrand and will award, on Saturday, the first prize bearing the name of the composer. Macha Méril, actress, producer and novelist, was the guest of Europe 1 on Friday to discuss this Michel Legrand award, which she created in order to bring her work to life and transmit her musical heritage. In total, Macha Méril will give three awards to a composer of film music, a musician or composer of a musical spectacle, and a first film score. The evening, private and without an audience due to the Covid-19, will take place on Saturday and will be broadcast on social networks. "Michel Legrand deserved this Prize because he is a great composer, quite simply", explains his wife.

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"A place of welcome to promote good music"

"His music has an incredible virtue, it is a pill of youth", affirms Macha Méril, who specifies that Michel Legrand has fans all over the world, who will also be able to virtually follow the evening which will be subtitled in English.

The event will take place at Domaine de la Mothe, near Montargis, the property where Michel Legrand lived the last years of his life and where he composed a lot.

"It was one of his dreams: to bring together at home, without moving, the great composers, his musician friends, filmmakers, writers, and to create together", explains the actress.

"It is therefore a place of welcome, to let us know good music, good jazz, good classical music, good tango, good gipsy", she continues, in comparison to "the pile of junk that circulate " today.

"The poor young people are invaded by a sonic jumble. Michel said to me 'I know where there is music and where there is not'. And there you have it, that is what I would like to convey."

"We, the connoisseurs"

For her, Michel Legrand was an artist who touched all circles and everyone, "because he had this art of being both popular and very learned", explains Macha Méril, however evoking the great requirement of her husband. .

"He thought that young people should start by doing twelve years of music theory before embarking on music", she says, complaining again "the young people of today": "What are they receive in the ears? That things that are unspeakable, "she insists.

"It's up to us connoisseurs to give them criteria for what good music is."

A Michel Legrand festival and original works

To bring the music and image of Michel Legrand to life, Macha Méril plans to digitize all the scores she has found. Unpublished works, composed but never used. "When the great composers die, in general, we know their works. At Michel, there was something, there is more," she says. "There are boxes of musicals that have not been edited, songs that have not been sung, a violin concerto that has never been played ...", continues Macha Méril, who says she wants to create a Michel Legrand festival over several days to organize concerts. "Each year, we will create a new work by Michel Legrand, because he kept composing. It was a fountain of music."