Michel Colombier

Michel Colombier
Born	May 23, 1939(1939-05-23) Lyon, France
Died	November 14, 2004(2004-11-14) (aged 65) Santa Monica, California, USA
Genres	Film score
Occupations	Composer, Conductor
Years active	1962–2003

Michel Colombier (May 23, 1939 — November 14, 2004) was a French composer, songwriter, arranger, and conductor.

Colombier was born in Lyon, and began his musical education at the age of six. By age fourteen, he had discovered jazz and improvisation and was performing with small combos and big bands. At twenty-two, he was hired as Musical Director of Barclay Records, and his freshman assignment was to arrange Charles Aznavour's first album in English for release in the United States. He composed the music for "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" at the Comédie-Française, his only creation for stage. Michel entered the world of ballet with one of Maurice Béjart's masterpieces, "Messe Pour Le Temps Present", co-written with avant-garde composer and musique concrète pioneer Pierre Henry. Another Colombier-Henry collaboration, "Psyché Rock", was adapted as the theme music for the animated TV series Futurama. Colombier went on to co-write for many years with Serge Gainsbourg. He collaborated with some of the artists in his native France including Charles Aznavour, Brigitte Fontaine, Jean-Luc Ponty, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, and Stephane Grappelli. In 1964 and 1968 he conducted the orchestra in the Eurovision Song Contest, both times for Monaco's entries.

Petula Clark chose him as her Musical Director and invited him to come with her to the United States. In addition to arranging her material, he co-wrote with her a number of songs. She introduced him to Herb Alpert of A&M Records, who immediately signed him as an artist/composer/performer. This collaboration gave birth to the album Wings. A rock oratorio which made use of a symphony orchestra and choir and prefigured the work of such bands as Queen^{[citation needed]}, it garnered three Grammy Award nominations and spawned a Genie Award-winning television special.

In Japan, he became known as "Fusion-sama", and has been referred to as the "Godfather of French Fusion." Colombier's music is best described as part classical, part jazz, part visual sonics . . . but always full of beauty. He continued to inspire and influence other artists throughout his long and vast career. During the course of his career, Colombier worked with an extremely diversified array of artists, including the Beach Boys, Supertramp, Herb Alpert, Quincy Jones, Roberta Flack, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Mathis, Neil Diamond, Herbie Hancock, Earth, Wind & Fire, Joni Mitchell, David Sanborn, Branford Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin, Jaco Pastorius and Madonna. He arranged the strings for her theme to Die Another Day (2002) and worked on her albums Music (2000) and American Life (2003). His score for her critically savaged film Swept Away was probably the movie's only saving grace. He often collaborated with LA session musicians such as Robbie Buchanan and was an avid user of Eric Persing's Spectrasonics products.

Colombier scored more than one hundred feature, cable, and television films. In his native France, he worked with a legendary list of directors including Claude Lelouch, Philippe Labro, Agnès Varda, Vittorio de Sica, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri Verneuil, and Jacques Demy. In the United States, his credits were eclectic and diverse, including the box office hits How Stella Got Her Groove Back, New Jack City, Ruthless People, The Golden Child, White Nights, Against All Odds, and - with Prince - the legendary Purple Rain, for which he won a Grammy as well as an Academy Award for Best Song Score. Colombier received many other film awards throughout his career, including two César Awards, a Golden Globe nomination, a People's Choice Award, and an Ace nomination. His compositional styles spanned an impressive range - it's not uncommon for a Colombier film score to embrace such disparate styles as smooth jazz, ethnic music, chamber music / string quartets, melodic synthesizer driven contemporary pop, and musique concrète. In the 1980s, Colombier pioneered a minimalist style of composition with extensive use of sampling, using processed natural sounds as percussive elements. All the while, his early years as a jingle writer can be traced in the immediacy of his themes. The unclassifiable nature of his music might help explain why only a fraction has been released on soundtrack albums - most of his work can only be heard in the films where it has to compete with sound effects and dialogue.

As a conductor, he led many of the world's great orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Covent Garden Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, the Chicago Orchestra, the Denver Symphony Orchestra, the Paris Opera, and the English Chamber Orchestra, among others. He wrote numerous classical and symphonic commissions, including works featuring Ernie Watts, the Kronos String Quartet, Michael Brecker, Stephane Grappelli, Toots Thielemans, and Katia and Marielle Labèque.

Colombier also wrote the music for more than twenty ballets, and worked with some of the world's greatest dance companies and choreographers, including Twyla Tharp, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Daniel Ezralow, Roland Petit, and Maurice Béjart.

Colombier died of cancer at his home in Santa Monica. He was survived by his second wife Dana, their daughters Siena and Arabella.

Michel Colombier wrote the music of Emmanuel in memory of his son who disappeared at the age of 5. Chris Botti played it. Most French citizens recognize it as the "generique" of antenne 2 which closed the programmes at night of their national Antenne2 channel.

Discography

Valley Music

• Messe Pour Le Temps Present (1967)
• Metamorphose/Messe Pour Le Temps Present (1997)
• Psyche Rock (1997)
• Mandala (1998)
• Catapult (2000)

Solo Albums

• Capot Pointu a.k.a. Campus (1967)
• Wings (1970)
• Nadia's Theme (1975)
• Michel Colombier (1979)
• Old Fool Back On Earth (1983)
• Wings [re-issue] (2002)
• Colombier Dreams (2002)

Soundtrack/score

• Une souris chez les hommes (1964)
• Bandes Originales de Films - Lino Ventura (1965)
• Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)
• Un flic (1972)
• L'Heritier / Tarot (1972)
• Du Rififi Au Cine "Vol. 2" (1972)
• Les Onze Mille Verges (1975)
• Bandes Sonores Originales (1976)
• Une Chambre En Ville (1982 )
• Asterix au Cinema (1983)
• Against All Odds (1984)
• Purple Rain (1984)
• White Nights (1985)
• The Golden Child (1986)
• The Money Pit (1986)
• Ruthless People (1986)
• Surrender (1987)
• Satisfaction (1988)
• Deep Cover (1992)
• Posse (1993)
• Elisa (1995)
• Trippin' (1999)
• Largo Winch (2001)
• Swept Away (2002)
• Michel Colombier/Philippe Labro (2003)

Michel Colombier wrote Emmanuel for his son who died at the age of 5.

Compilation appearances

External links

• Official website
• Michel Colombier at the Internet Movie Database
• Find-A-Grave profile for Michel Colombier

Persondata
Name	Colombier, Michel
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	May 23, 1939
Place of birth
Date of death	November 14, 2004
Place of death