Stephen Schwartz (composer)

Stephen Lawrence Schwartz (born March 6, 1948) is an American musical theatre lyricist and composer.

He grew up in the Williston Park area of Nassau County, New York, where he graduated from Mineola High School in 1964.

While attending Carnegie Mellon University, Schwartz composed and directed an early version of Pippin (entitled Pippin, Pippin) with the student-run theatre group, Scotch'n'Soda.

Schwartz graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1968 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drama.

Upon returning to New York City, Schwartz went to work as a producer for RCA Records, but shortly thereafter began to work in Broadway theatre.

He was asked to be the musical director of the first American rock opera, The Survival of St. Joan.

He was credited as the producer of the double album of the soundtrack with the progressive rock group Smoke Rise on Paramount Records.

His first major credit was the title song for the play Butterflies Are Free; the song was eventually used in the movie version as well.

In a career spanning over five decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as Godspell (1971), Pippin (1972), and Wicked (2003).

In 1971, he wrote music and lyrics for Godspell, for which he won several awards, including two Grammys.

For this musical's Toronto production in 1972, he asked Paul Shaffer to be the musical director, thus starting Shaffer's career.

Godspell was followed by the English-language texts, in collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, for Bernstein's Mass, which opened the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

In 1972, the long-running Pippin premiered on Broadway.

Schwartz had begun writing songs for Pippin while in college, although none of the songs from the college version ended up in the Broadway production.

Both Pippin and Godspell continue to be frequently produced.

Two years after Pippin debuted, Schwartz wrote music and lyrics of The Magic Show, which ran for just under 2,000 performances.

By mid-1974, at age 26, Schwartz had three smash hit musicals playing in New York simultaneously.

Next were the music and lyrics of The Baker's Wife, which closed before reaching Broadway after an out-of-town tryout tour in 1976.

In 1977, Schwartz wrote a children's book called The Perfect Peach.

In 1978, Schwartz's next Broadway project was a musical version of Studs Terkel's Working, which he adapted and directed, winning the Drama Desk Award as best director, and for which he contributed four songs.

He also co-directed the television production, which was presented as part of the PBS American Playhouse series.

In the 1980s, Schwartz wrote songs for a one-act musical for children, The Trip, which 20 years later was revised, expanded and produced as Captain Louie.

He then wrote music for three of the songs of the Off-Broadway revue Personals, and lyrics to Charles Strouse's music for the musical Rags.

However, the cast album went on to attain cult status, which led to several subsequent productions, including a London production directed by Trevor Nunn in 1990 and another at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey in 2005.

In 1991, Schwartz wrote the music and lyrics for the musical Children of Eden.

He has contributed lyrics to a number of successful films, including Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), The Prince of Egypt (1998, music and lyrics), and Enchanted (2007).

Schwartz has earned numerous accolades including three Grammy Awards, three Academy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award.

He has received nominations for six Tony Awards, and a Laurence Olivier Award.

He then began working in film, collaborating with composer Alan Menken on the scores for the Disney animated features Pocahontas (1995), for which he received two Academy Awards, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996).

He provided songs for DreamWorks' first animated feature, The Prince of Egypt (1998), winning another Academy Award for the song "When You Believe".

He wrote music and lyrics for the original television musical, Geppetto (2000), seen on The Wonderful World of Disney.

In 2003, Schwartz returned to Broadway, as composer and lyricist for Wicked, a musical based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which tells the story of the Oz characters from the point of view of the witches.

Schwartz won a Grammy Award for his work as composer and lyricist and producer of Wicked's cast recording.

A stage adaptation of this piece premiered in June 2006 at The Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, and was titled Geppetto and Son, and is now known as Disney's My Son Pinocchio: Geppetto's Musical Tale.

On March 23, 2006, the Broadway production of Wicked passed the 1,000 performance mark, making Schwartz one of four composers (the other three being Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jerry Herman, and Richard Rodgers) to have three shows last that long on Broadway (the other two were Pippin and The Magic Show).

In 2007, Schwartz joined Jerry Herman as being one of only two composer/lyricists to have three shows run longer than 1,500 performances on Broadway.

A version created for young performers, titled Geppetto & Son, Jr. had its world premiere on July 17, 2009, at the Lyric Theatre in Stuart, Florida.

It was presented by the StarStruck Performing Arts Center.

He received the Tony Award's Isabelle Stevenson Award in 2015.

Schwartz was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Sheila Lorna (née Siegel), a teacher, and Stanley Leonard Schwartz, a businessman.