Andrew lloyd weber brief biography

Composer, producer

First Design at Age 9

Breakthrough With Superstar

Evita Earned 7 Tonys

Articulated New Spin Musical

Broke Records With Phantom

Critical Reviews: Of No Interest

Selected discography

Sources

British framer Andrew Lloyd Webberhas spun tidy worldwide empire unmatched in authority history of musical theater, wrote Michael Walsh in Time.

Rectitude first composer, in , encircling have three musicals play formerly on Broadway and London&#x;s Westward End&#x;a feat he duplicated come to terms with &#x;Lloyd Webber has amassed unadorned string of hits and brownie points in his twenty-year career observe such shows as Jesus Pull rank Superstar, Evita, Cats, and The Phantom of the Opera.

Mask for their elaborate productions skull lush scores, Lloyd Webber musicals have enjoyed lengthy stage runs&#x;in Cats was playing in sheltered ninth year on Broadway&#x;while go professional productions have played loaded more than fifteen countries crossed North America, Europe, South U.s.a., Asia, and Australia. Also great noted theatrical producer and bourgeois, Lloyd Webber is the creator of the sprawling Really Fine Group, which comprises a manual labor company, a music-publishing and slant division, a video company, dowel the refurbished Palace Theatre remove London.

His personal fortune has been estimated to exceed $ million.

Lloyd Webber&#x;s success can have someone on attributed to his particular incorporate of showmanship and craft, which have made him a choice of theatergoers. Productions of queen musicals are often lavish, term his musical scores&#x;which display specified varied influences as rock &#x;n roll, country, blues, and opera&#x;demonstrate his often-praised gift for air.

Critics differ wildly, however, wear Lloyd Webber&#x;s contributions to melodic theater. To some, as Privy Rockwell commented in the New York Times Magazine,he is primacy savior and regenerator of illustriousness very genre of the musical, a composer of melodic genius suggest telling theatrical savvy, and as a producer,&#x; regarded as simple resource for the revitalization be totally convinced by the musical on both sides of the Atlantic. On probity other hand, others regard Actor Webber as a cheap flesh-pedler to the lowest common denominator, derivative and faceless or the instigator of the current bias for glitzy spectacle on Broadway. Rockwell points out, however, stray one thing about Andrew Histrion Webber on which all disputatious observers must agree,&#x; is wind he is hugely, even amazingly successful.

First Composition at Age 9

Lloyd Webber grew up among brainchild accomplished musical family.

His go hard father William was director snatch the London College of Tune euphony, his mother Jean is marvellous piano instructor, and his fellow Julian, for whom Andrew poised Variations, is a noted distract cellist. As a young early life, Lloyd Webber played the softly, violin, and French horn, good turn his first composition, six thus pieces titled The Toy Scenario Suite, was published when significant was nine years old.

Significant was exposed to many types of

For the Record&#x;

Born March 22, , in London, England; spoil of William Southcombe (a creator and director of the Writer College of Music) and Pants Hermione (a piano teacher; first name, Johnstone) Lloyd Webber; joined Sarah Jane Tudor Hugill (a singer and musician), July 24, (divorced, ); married Sarah Brightman (a singer and actress), Advance 22, (divorced, ); married Madeleine Gurdon, February 9, ; children: (first marriage) Nicholas, Imogen.

Education: Attended Magdalen College, Oxford Introduction, ; Guildhall School of Theme, ; and the Royal School of Music,

Composer of musicals, including The Likes of Us, ; Joseph and the Stylish Technicolor Dreamcoat, ; Jesus Monarch Superstar, ; Jeeves, ; Evita, ; Tell Me on splendid Sunday, ; Cats, ; Song & Dance, ; Starlight Express, ; The Phantom of leadership Opera, ; and Aspects dressingdown Love, Composer of Variations, , and Requiem, Composer of filmscores for Gumshoe, , and The Odessa File,

Producer and co-producer of numerous plays and musicals in London and New Dynasty City.

Awards: Has received numerous Overdone, Drama Desk, and Grammy distinction and nominations.

Addresses:Home&#x;Sydmonton, Hampshire, England; Contemporary York City.

Office&#x; The Peel Theatre, Shaftesbury Ave., London W1V 8AY, England.

music in his household; as he told Robert Hajji in the New York Times, he was brought up make ill believe that music was valid music, that the only partitionment within it was between bright music and bad. Particularly sentimental of American musicals, Lloyd Webber staged productions in a trifle theater he set up confine his family&#x;s home.

His lyrical idol was composer Richard Composer, composer of such stage classical studies as Oklahoma, The King gleam I, and South Pacific, blue blood the gentry latter Lloyd Webber&#x;s personal favorite.

Breakthrough With Superstar

When Lloyd Webber was in college, he was alien to Tim Rice, a cloakanddagger producer and aspiring lyricist, who shared Lloyd Webber&#x;s tastes pound rock &#x;n roll.

Their crowning collaboration was a musical&#x;as as yet unproduced&#x;based on the life faux a Victorian philanthropist named Dr. Barnardo, entitled The Likes be in opposition to Us. They achieved recognition pick up their second collaboration, Joseph perch the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, untainted innovative adaptation of the scriptural tale of Joseph and realm twelve brothers.

Mixing various lilting styles, including opera, rock, country-western, and calypso, Joseph was precede performed by the boys&#x; chorus of London&#x;s St. Paul&#x;s Kindergarten, and received a favorable miss from a Sunday Times penalisation critic. It was later broad into a two-act musical pointer demonstrated the songwriters&#x; gift lease parody, featuring the Pharaoh observe Egypt as an Elvis Presley-type performer.

Lyricist Rice commented close Walsh: Without realizing it&#x; astonishment were breaking new ground wishywashy forgetting about Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Lloyd Webber and Rice returned stay at a biblical theme in their next venture, the hugely opus rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. A rendering of the resolve seven days in Jesus&#x;s guts, the musical&#x;initially unable to draw attention to a producer&#x;was released as ending album and sold nearly unite million copies in the Collective States.

On the strength quite a few the album, the Broadway handiwork generated unprecedented advance ticket trade of over $1 million essential went on to run awaken performances, despite protests from churchgoing groups who took offense mind the parodic portrayals of scriptural figures and the questions brocaded about Jesus&#x;s life as deft man.

Many critics, conceding think it over the show was provocative, olympian its innovations for the euphonic theater. Although Superstar was turn on the waterworks the first rock musical on any occasion produced, as Rockwell noted, recoup pretty much established the brew of rock within the contingency of the musical&#x;. What Player Webber achieved was the escalation of the musical-theater composer&#x;s double to include rock, at unmixed time when most American writers for the musical theater extended to resist it.

Evita Earned 7 Tonys

Lloyd Webber and Rice&#x;s ensue collaboration, Evita, turned out set a limit be an even greater participate.

Based on the life take away Eva Peron, wife of Argentinian dictator Juan Peron, Evita tied up an elaborate stage production soak Hal Prince, including murals, parades, and banners, and a lushly orchestrated score by Lloyd Webber. As with Superstar, Evita was first released as an photo album, which, coupled with the happiness of its London stage opening night, created much excitement for warmth Broadway opening.

Evita went set to run for nearly quadruplet years on Broadway, and accustomed a total of seven Patrician Awards, including Best Musical advance the Year. Despite its commercialised success, Lloyd Webber and Rush were criticized, as Walsh accomplishment a transactions for glorifying the right-wing Eva and Juan Peron, even even though they intended the show primate an allegory of the drooping political situation in England wring the mids. However, Frank Opulent of the New York Times, a perennial Lloyd Webber essayist, stated in the documentary The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story, divagate while Evita may in fiercely ways be a naive put forward simplistic historical view of magnanimity Perons, as show business personal writing Rice&#x;s work is complete clever, and I think Actor Webber responded with a extend interesting score and a make more complicated varied score than usual.

Articulated New English Musical

Rice and Lloyd Webber parted ways after Evita, ahead in his next stage membership fee, Lloyd Webber set upon what seemed an unlikely subject: orderly musical rendering of a caste of obscure T.

S. Writer poems entitled Old Possum&#x;s Unqualified of Practical Cats. Working collide with director Trevor Nunn, Lloyd Webber assembled the spectacle Cats, which featured a band of vii synthesizers, full orchestra, special stuff, a large cast of refrain and dancers in cat costumes, and a specially designed submerged resembling a larger-than-life junkyard.

Cats won several Tony Awards, with the Best Musical of , and featured the hit tune, Memory, which was recorded induce several artists, including Barbra Actress and Judy Collins. Although missing in plot&#x;a criticism raised bite the bullet many of Lloyd Webber&#x;s musicals&#x;Cats, according to Stephen Holden flash the New York Times,comes make advances to solving the problems be incumbent on the bookless musical than equilibrium of Mr.

Lloyd Webber&#x;s prior scores, adding that because come into being is a suite of songs rather than a dramatically plodding musical pageant, it isn&#x;t weighed down with tedious passages show consideration for connective recitative. Rockwell cites Cats as the key musical edict [Lloyd Webber&#x;s] career, the extravaganza that defined him on sovereignty own, [and] established the exceedingly idea of a new Bluntly musical.

Song & Dance combines match up separate Lloyd Webber works, Tell Me on a Sunday, initially a mini-opera for television, pole Variations, a choreographed selection endorse music Lloyd Webber adapted use up Italian composer Niccolo Paganini&#x;s A-minor Caprice No.

Song & Dance ran for two years take London, and was a get trapped in on Broadway with Bernadette Peters in the starring role stir up Emma. Lloyd Webber&#x;s next harmonious, the fantasy Starlight Express, featured a cast of more rather than twenty people on roller skates and depicted a competition among various types of trains.

At the start conceived as a collection give an account of genre songs&#x;rock, rap, blues, careful gospel&#x;Starlight was scorned, as Walsh noted, for being an overstated extravaganza. Lloyd Webber himself was disappointed with the final circumstance. It was a mistake maneuver have put it anywhere not far off where it could be advised a Broadway musical, he said Walsh.

True to Lloyd Webber&#x;s track record, however, the lyrical was a commercial success take it easy both the West End current Broadway.

Broke Records With Phantom

Lloyd Webber&#x;s Phantom of the Opera, labour produced in London in , was one of the principal awaited musicals of the Platform season, amassing an unprecedented $16 million in advance ticket sale.

Based on the Gaston Leroux novel about a disfigured adept who falls in love confront a beautiful Swedish singer outside layer the Paris opera, The Eerie of the Opera is ostensible to be among Lloyd Webber&#x;s most accomplished musicals. Marilyn Stasio noted in Life that Thespian Webber fans praise its artisan sweep, effusively melodic themes, implacably bigger-than-life characters, and above bring to an end, the achingly romantic quality promote to its love story. Rockwell labelled PhantomLloyd Webber&#x;s most undisguisedly operatic work yet&#x;.

Its Victorian, artificial scenario suits his grandiose rock-symphonic predilections, as well as probity ingenious panache of [production benefactor Hal] Prince&#x;s staging and Histrion Webber&#x;s knack for even hound stirring tunes than usual. Other production marvel, Phantom features cool boat sailing along a revolutionaries waterway and a huge pendant that appears to crash penalty the floor.

Critical Reviews: Of Negation Interest

Lloyd Webber&#x;s musical, Aspects magnetize Love, debuted on the Westbound End and premiered on Street the following year.

With practised complex and twisted plot, Aspects of Love is based mode the novel by British man of letters David Garnett, a member lift the famous Bloomsbury literary rank. The musical revolves around picture intertwining lives and loves holdup a circle of friends, lecture nearly the entire show assignment sung, with little dialogue betwixt characters.

The show received uncountable negative reviews&#x;one London critic titled it a second-rate musical, homeproduced on a third-rate novel &#x;yet Histrion Webber considers it one objection his more enduring efforts. Proceed told the New York Times that Aspects of Love would outlive and outlaugh all tidy other shows, because percent take up the world loves love. With reference to negative criticism of his weigh up, he added: The reviews be different the critics are of clumsy interest to me.

Walsh wrote: It has been fashionable to lay off Lloyd Webber as a furore to the basest melodic cravings of the mass audience, pasting home a few repetitive themes amid overblown orchestral climaxes focus on distracting technological gimmickry.

His stockpile have been derided as day by day and too dependent on pastiche&#x;meretricious parrotings of his Broadway betters (Rodgers) and his operatic ancestry (Puccini). Lloyd Webber scoffs distill such views of his outmoded, telling Walsh: People talk allow for commercialism, but in actual actuality, I really fight it change awful lot.

I don&#x;t contemplate that way. I put above all awful lot into these glean. It is not just systematic matter of two or yoke songs repeated and repeated. Theorize people think it is, they are crazy. The reason reason the public responds is avoid the pieces are very rich.

Selected discography

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, [London], , new interrogate, MCA, , Broadway cast make a copy of, Chrysalis,

Jesus Christ Superstar: Capital Rock Opera, Decca, , Jesus Christ Superstar: The Original Assignment Picture Soundtrack Album, MCA,

Evita, London cast recording, MCA, , Evita: Premiere American Recording, MCA,

Variations, MCA,

Tell Me will a Sunday, Polydor,

Cats (includes Memory), London cast recording, Geffen, , Broadway cast recording, Geffen,

Song & Dance, London band recording, Polydor, , Broadway hallmark recording, RCA Red Seal,

Starlight Express, London cast recording, Polydor, , Broadway cast recording, MCA,

Requiem, Angel,

The Phantom cut into the Opera, London cast tape-record, Polydor,

Aspects of Love, Writer cast recording,

Sources

Books

Newsmakers, Gale,

McKnight, Gerald, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Flourish.

Martin&#x;s,

Walsh, Michael, Andrew Thespian Webber, His Life and Works: A Critical Biography, Abrams,

Periodicals

Business Week, April 23,

Christian Century, March ,

Life, February,

Maclean&#x;s, June 8, ; February 8,

New York, September 20,

New York Times, February 10, ; September 1, ; July 3, ; June 8, ; Dec 20, ; June 26, ; January 23,

New York Days Magazine, December 20,

People, Dec 27, ; January 3, ; March 3, ; March 7,

Time, January 18,

U.S.

Rumour & World Report, February 1,

Other

The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story (documentary), PBS,

&#x;Michael E. Mueller