Michael Preston Barr
American composer
Michael Barr (January 2, 1927 in Indiana – May 19, 2009 in Los Angeles, California), was an American composer of traditional pop and showtunes, who in collaboration with lyricist Dion McGregor, wrote "Try Your Wings" for cabaret singer/pianist Blossom Dearie. "Try Your Wings" was also recorded and performed for many years by Anita O'Day and was featured in the 2003 film My Life Without Me, starring Sara Polly and Mark Rufallo. Together, Barr and McGregor also wrote "Where Is The Wonder", which was recorded by Barbra Streisand and featured on her 1965 TV special "My Name Is Barbra".
Barr was also known for having tape-recorded Dion McGregor's surprisingly lucid and humorous "somniloquies", or sleep-talks, in which Dion would narrate complete stories with beginning, middle and end. These can be heard via recordings released originally by Decca Records and later, by Torpor Vigil Industries, the first of which is "The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor". John Zorn's Tzadik label also released a CD—a sequel to the LP, called Dion McGregor Dreams Again. The liner notes by compilation co-ordinator Phil Milstein describe details of the meeting of Michael Barr and Dion McGregor and of how these extraordinary recordings came to be.
Barr was working on a movie-musical version of The Dream World Of Dion McGregor which was originally released as an LP through Decca Records in January, 1964. The movie adaptation includes, in addition to the somniliquies songs which comment on them, most of which were written by Mr. Barr and Dion McGregor.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6833616. VIAF identifies the subject as 121066728. The Library of Congress control number is n2010029799. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2009, 2003 and 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Preston Barr” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.