Why this tune?
In honor of Bastille Day, which our French friends just celebrated on July 14, this week’s tune highlights a French composer. Michel Legrand wrote “I Will Wait For You” for the 1964 musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” and it quickly joined the jazz and pop canon alongside many of his other songs. That score also gave us “Watch What Happens.” another jazz standard. Both have been recorded hundreds of times as instrumentals and with the lyrics in French or English.
Legrand won three Oscars and five Grammys for his music, much of which written with the legendary lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman. I had the privilege to meet Alan last year. He told us that he still has some of Legrand’s melodies in a drawer waiting for lyrics.
Alan also recounted the story of their work on another Legrand classic “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” The song had to appear twice in the film “The Happy Ending” in two different contexts. That title, written by Marilyn, worked in both. You hear the song at the start of the film when the main character remembers her marriage proposal fondly. Later in the film the same line reflects her angst about her future.
I take some liberties (or perhaps libertés) with Legrand’s original melody in my version of “I Will Wait For You.”
Oren Levine, jazz pianist and songwriter 