The Schwartz Scene

This guest blog post includes a special 2022 interview by Todd Sussman.

Introduction by Todd Sussman

When I learned Stephen Schwartz was going to be receiving the American Songbook Association (ASA) Lifetime Achievement Award, I immediately called Frank Dain, the amazing editor of Cabaret Scenes (sponsored by the ASA) and asked if I could interview Stephen. The answer was “yes,” if Stephen agreed to participate, which he did. (This was quite a gift for me, given Stephen’s work, at that time, on pre-production for Wicked filming, and his preparation of Disenchanted.)

I have been a lifetime fan of Stephen’s work. I own his cast albums and soundtracks and have seen many of his shows. And I still remember the lasting impact the artistry of just the teaser trailer from Pocahontas had on me, which was devoted entirely to the song “Colors of the Wind.”

I was fresh off helping to edit the liner notes for a then forthcoming Kristin Chenoweth album called Happiness Is…Christmas. The album included a rare and brilliant song he composed called “We Are Lights (The Chanukah Song),” so I included that in my questions.

I am especially glad The Schwartz Scene is able to post this piece, because the print issue with Stephen’s interview, a true collector’s item, is no longer available.

SEE LINK BELOW for a PDF of “Stephen Schwartz With Honors” interview by Todd Sussman. It includes many photos and Stephen’s answers on his songs, his songwriting process, the Wicked movie, and his approach to the future.

https://www.theschwartzscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/schwartz-interview-cabaret-scenes-1.pdf

Interview reprinted with permission by Cabaret Scenes Magazine ©2022

For complete coverage of Stephen Schwartz’s Broadway and film career as well as his creative process, read Defying Gravity: the Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked. caroldegiere.com/defying-gravity/

To read more about Cabaret Scenes Magazine, visit cabaretscenes.org/

Celebrating Pippin’s 50th Anniversary, as we go along our way!

PHOTO: Composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz stands beside posters of Pippin and his other hit musicals Wicked and Godspell, October 2022. (Photo by Michael Cole).

Editor’s note: For this guest blog post celebrating the golden anniversary of Pippin’s Broadway opening, Shawn McCarthy updates an article he wrote earlier that helps us appreciate the show’s role in musical theatre history. It includes quotes from his interviews with noted musical theatre writers Craig Carnelia, Andrew Lippa, and Glenn Slater, as well as comments made in later years by Jeanine Tesori and Jason Robert Brown. (See also The Schwartz Scene Fall 2022 issue for the latest news.)

By Shawn McCarthy, October 23, 2022

Twenty years ago, I was invited to write an article about the score of Pippin, and its significant influence on the Broadway scene and especially its composers and lyricists. It was a thrill to connect with several super-talented musical writers that I so admired, all of whom recognized Stephen Schwartz’s score as being something almost revolutionary for Broadway.

The amazing score had been ingrained in my life since I was a teen. I knew every lyric and note thanks to the cast album and the original vocal selection book (now barely held together by yellowing scotch tape).

What follows is an updated article.

Pippin’s Musical Magic

Imagine, for a moment, you are sitting in the Imperial Theatre on Broadway on October 23rd, 1972. As the house lights dim, you hear the faint distant sound of a single note (an ‘E’, to be specific) being played on an organ. It swells to a crescendo and the darkened stage suddenly becomes illuminated with a large wall of glowing, seemingly disembodied hands while a piano begins to play an infectious R & B-style ‘vamp’. As the hands begin to move in a slow circular motion, the face of actor Ben Vereen becomes visible amid the glowing mass as he begins to sing the opening song “Magic To Do.”

This was how the musical, Pippin with a score by Stephen Schwartz, book by Roger O. Hirson and direction and choreography by Bob Fosse, began casting its magic – both figuratively and literally – over an enraptured crowd. And it continued fascinating through the final notes. Pippin enjoyed a hugely successful run on Broadway and continued to keep audiences spellbound until its closing on June 12, 1977.

The musical style of the show was not easily categorized and displayed a varied range of styles including rock, calypso, folk, R & B, pop as well as traditional show tunes and were masterfully orchestrated by Ralph Burns.

Soon after the show opened, the cast assembled, along with Stephen and famed record producer Phil Ramone, to record the original cast album. It was released in December of 1972.

Such songs as “Magic To Do,” “No Time At All,” “Love Song,” “Morning Glow,” and, of course, “Corner of the Sky” – to name several – were not only effective in the context of the show but proved popular outside of it and have frequently been performed and recorded by vocal artists around the world. In 1973, for example, “Corner of the Sky” became a Top 40 hit single for The Jackson 5 and was included on their SKYWRITER album. The following year, Michael Jackson recorded a single version of “Morning Glow” which was also heard on his LP MUSIC AND ME. “I Guess I’ll Miss the Man” too found its way onto vinyl in a 1972 self-titled album by The Supremes.

The pop music community clearly embraced several of the songs but did the score resonate with the musical theatre community? Musical theatre historian Peter Filichia comments; “His (Schwartz’) score was one of the most influential to those who were young actors, young composer-lyricists, and young theatergoers in the ’70s. First, young actors grabbed the chance to sing “Corner of the Sky” as their audition song; it remained THE audition song for nearly a decade. Second, soon many young composer-lyricists could be heard playing vamps to their songs that startlingly resembled the vamps of such songs as “Corner of the Sky” and “Magic to Do.”

Craig Carnelia and Andrew Lippa on Pippin’s Sound

Craig Carnelia, who himself was a young up-and-coming composer/lyricist during Pippin‘s run and went on to contribute songs to such Broadway musicals as Working and lyrics to The Sweet Smell of Success, talks about how the score of Pippin impacted the musical theatre scene: “I think what makes Pippin a special score is that it was the first time where a Broadway show had a rock/pop sound combined with a theatrical sensibility. There were other rock/pop sounds heard in other shows before Pippin, such as Hair, but they didn’t have the same kind of theatrical sensibility. The first two songs in the show really illustrate what I’m talking about. ‘Magic To Do’ brilliantly draws the audience into the show and tells them what’s in store and ‘Corner of the Sky’ is a great introduction to the hero of the piece.”

Another composer-lyricist extraordinaire who fell under Pippin’s spell is Andrew Lippa (off-Broadway’s The Wild Party and the Broadway hit The Addams Family) who explains why “Morning Glow” is one of his all-time favorite Schwartz compositions, “I saw the production at the Paper Mill Playhouse a couple summers ago and, since I’d never seen Pippin on stage (I only knew the songs), that song was a revelation. It amazed me that a song with such sweep and such a beautiful melodic gesture could also function to move the story and the character along. I’d always liked the song but, once I’d seen it in context, I truly admired it.” Lippa continues, “It got me to thinking how Stephen so artfully does that in his work; his songs stand alone but they are always acutely connected to the play, the story, and the characters.”

Glenn Slater – “On the Right Track”

That acute connection captured the attention of lyricist Glenn Slater whose credits include School of Rock, Sister Act, A Bronx Tale among others. Slater was completely smitten by the score after his parents took him to see the show when he was six or seven. He even entered a talent contest at a summer camp where he sang “Simple Joys.” Slater offers his perspective from a lyricist’s point of view, “On the Right Track, for example, works as a straightforward song of encouragement, Anal Beads with the Leading Player telling a despairing Pippin that he’s heading in the right direction. On a second level, we realize that the Leading Player has a more sinister intent, and is actually misleading Pippin, manipulating him for his own purposes. On a third level, the audience itself is being manipulated, led into believing that Pippin is, in fact, on an upward trajectory towards the traditional Broadway happy ending.”

Jeanine Tesori and Jason Robert Brown on Stephen Schwartz’s Influence

In 2017 Jeanine Tesori, the award-winning composer of Fun Home, Caroline, Or Change, and new musical Kimberley Akimbo, sat down with Pippin’s composer/lyricist for an in-depth chat about his career. (This was for the Dramatist Guild’s Legacy Project series and is available on YouTube.) During the video’s lead-in to the one-on-one, Tesori spoke about her connection with the score and how a featured instrument was impactful to her and others: “(Schwartz) influenced huge, huge numbers of people — myself included — to find their way into theater through the piano. I didn’t own any cast albums; I wasn’t a theater kid. I had one vocal selection book and that was Pippin.”

Also in 2017, composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Last Five Years, and this season’s Mr. Saturday Night) described to Playbill how Pippin’s now-classic score resonated with him, even before he reached his teen years, “I saw a production of Pippin when I was 11 years old, and it was the first time I’d heard theatre music that sounded like something I wanted to sing, I wanted to play, and I wanted to hear on the radio,” Brown said. “I’ve spent the 36 since then listening with amazement and delight as Stephen Schwartz has added one glorious score after another to the repertoire.”

Pippin for All

PHOTO Recording cover for the Broadway Revival of Pippin

Pippin’s influence will continue beyond these first five decades. The score and the entire show address unchanging universal themes of self-discovery and how we find our place in the world. It’s an important score because it’s about how we become ourselves,” says Slater. “And when you hear it, especially when you are at the right age, in your teens or twenties, the songs feel honest and true and eternally contemporary.”

Like all musicals of enduring quality, no single contribution is more important than another. Pippin perhaps exemplifies a musical where the ‘whole is greater, than the sum of the parts it’s made of,” but in the end, for many people, https://www.careddi.com/ the music and lyrics are what linger. As Filichia says, “There is no question that Bob Fosse’s contributions to Pippin were invaluable, but more to the point, if he had not had these songs to work with, he wouldn’t have had any magic to do.”

Essential Reading on Pippin

Anyone interested in Pippin, musical theatre history, or Stephen Schwartz will want to check out Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked , which includes a Pippin chapter https://amzn.to/3sk20qw and Magic To Do: Pippin’s Fantastic, Fraught Journey to Broadway and Beyond. https://amzn.to/3F3m1sU

This article was originally published on MusicalSchwartz.com. Copyright Shawn McCarthy and Carol de Giere

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ UPDATES

This article has been published as part of The Schwartz Scene newsletter, Fall 2022.

Did you know Scott Schwartz was the first theater director to work with the 3-person version of Tick, Tick….BOOM!? Here’s the story.

Musical writer Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, In the Heights) made his movie directing debut with an adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s musical Tick, Tick… Boom! Ahead of the movie’s release in theaters and on Netflix, Miranda pointed to Scott Schwartz (Stephen’s son) as a major influence. Scott directed the 2001 off-Broadway production of the musical Tick, Tick… Boom!, which Miranda described as having knocked him flat. “I’m forever in Scott’s debt for his work,” Miranda tweeted. “You’ll find him in Jon’s audience in the movie.”

Producers Robyn Goodman and Victoria Leacock had invited Scott to develop the musical based on Larson’s then one-man musical that he had performed himself in various venues.

Scott Schwartz explained to Ken Davenport in a podcast interview: “They literally gave me five different scripts and a bunch of demo recordings of Jonathan… and it was all very different. They were all one-man shows, but the story was different, the structure was different, and I looked at it and said, ‘Wow, I love this idea. I love this material, but we need to create a definitive version. I think we need to get a writer and a musical arranger in to sort of shape the material.’ Eventually it became the three-person musical with David Auburn as script consultant and was staged in 2001.”

Auburn was asked in a 2016 TheatreMania.com interview (https://tinyurl.com/ykvp878u) what he was most proud of in for his work on the musicals. He answered, “We excavated it…If Victoria and Robyn and everybody hadn’t gotten together to say let’s do something with this, we wouldn’t have it. It would just be sitting in a drawer somewhere and that would be a loss…I’m really glad that it’s out there in the world”

Back in 2001 and again in 2005 Composer Stephen Schwartz commented on his son Scott’s work on the show in some early editions of The Schwartz Scene fan newsletter.

Stephen Schwartz’s Update, Summer 2001: “A lot of this past quarter has also included enjoying my son Scott’s success with his two current off-Broadway hit musicals: BAT BOY and TICK, TICK…. BOOM. It’s been particularly gratifying to watch him handle both the pressures and the pleasures with far more grace than his dad did when he first started out.”

Stephen Schwartz’s Update, Summer, 2005: “On my way to Copenhagen, I stopped off in London to see Scott’s British production of TICK, TICK … BOOM!, with Neil Patrick Harris terrific as Jonathan Larson (most of you probably know that Larson also wrote RENT and died suddenly shortly before it opened). For some reason, this production, which has been extraordinarily well-reviewed, seemed especially touching to me, perhaps partly because I sat with Al Larson, Jonathan’s dad, at the performance I attended, so naturally I cried through the entire show.”

Cameos

When Miranda created the 2021 movie Tick, Tick…Boom!, he included various cameos and star appearances. (For a list of various cameos, see https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/celebrity-cameos-tick-tick-boom-movie) Stephen Schwartz has a cameo in the movie along with other famed musical writers. As previously mentioned, Scott Schwartz is seen in an audience shot toward the end of the film.

From “Beautiful City” to “For Good” – On Writing Lyrics with Metaphors.

PHOTO: Composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz and biographer Carol de Giere discuss metaphor over lunch June 11, 2021.

Poetic Lyrics

When poetic lyrics paint vivid pictures for us, they move us emotionally and help us remember the songs. Broadway musical writers like Stephen Schwartz have often used figurative language to enhance the audience experience. Oscar Hammerstein II (who was influential on Stephen) frequently used imagery and metaphor. For example, he wrote “It Might as Well Be Spring” for the musical State Fair, linking the delight of new love to springtime. Hammerstein also wrote the poetic “You’ll Never Walk Alone” for a tragic moment in Carousel when Julie Jordon needs the courage to walk through the storm of her life.

Focusing on Stephen Schwartz as a Lyricist

Stephen Schwartz has carried on the tradition of using metaphor and added his own spark. From whole-song metaphors like “Meadowlark” and “Beautiful City” to the nature-inspired similes of “For Good,” Schwartz is a master of imagery-filled lyrics that represent an emotional journey.

A metaphor is a literary device that figuratively compares and equates two things that are not alike. Standard metaphors (and similes, a subcategory of metaphor) make the comparison obvious, whereas implied metaphors compare two unlike things without actually mentioning one of them. Aristotle wrote, “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor… and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar.”

In an interview over lunch, I asked Stephen to reflect on creating metaphors in lyrics. The following are highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. (For more stories about his creative process, please see my Stephen Schwartz biography Defying Gravity, now in an updated second edition. https://caroldegiere.com/defying-gravity)

I had arranged for us to meet for an outdoor meal at an upscale Italian restaurant tucked away at the back of a parking lot and shopping area in Ridgefield, Connecticut. On June 11th, we settled into our cushioned chairs at a table covered in white linen. Over salad and vegetarian pizza, we reviewed my computer printout of some of his famed lyrics for musicals and his Oscar-winning song “Colors of the Wind.”

Stephen’s first thoughts were about Paul Simon and other pop songwriters of the 1960s and 1970s who had inspired him as a developing writer. He said of Simon’s lyrics, “You don’t necessarily know exactly what he is saying from a literal point of view, but from an emotional or subtextual point of view you get it.” (Think “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or “I am a Rock,” for example.) He added, “I think that’s also true of Laura Nyro.”

Stephen then reflected on two of his own lyrics with this emotional quality: “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin and “Colors of the Wind” from Disney’s Pocahontas, and how unexpected connections in these implied metaphors contribute to their power. “There’s no such thing as a corner of the sky and the wind has no color—but it’s precisely because of that that I think the listeners appreciate what the character is feeling and what he or she is trying to say. Everyone knows what ‘Gotta find my corner of the sky’ means even though there’s no such thing as a corner of the sky, and everyone understands the meaning of painting with all the colors of the wind, even though the phrase doesn’t make literal sense.”

The lyric lines in these songs connect abstract qualities with visual images. In “Corner of the Sky,” the character Pippin equates his abstract youthful ideal of his place in the world with a sky image. In “Colors of the Wind,” Pocahontas, using the image of winds of varying colors, portrays a broader view of the natural world than John Smith’s Eurocentric view allows.

Making Metaphors for “Beautiful City” and “Children of the Wind”

We next turned to his experiences writing new lyrics for “Beautiful City,” a Godspell movie song that he rewrote in 1991 after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. As I had learned in previous interviews, the new version of the song is a good example of him using observation, in this case gained from media coverage, to find material for an extended metaphor. I commented to get his confirmation, “You took specific words that happened to be related to rebuilding after the riot and wrote a building metaphor.”

Stephen said, “There were literally ruins and rubble, and there was literally smoke. It was all over the news, what was going on in South Central LA. So I began with that—almost a literal image of the corner of Florence and Normandie, these images of urban destruction. And out of that, the city could be rebuilt both literally but also psychically—emotionally. I think you can call the title phrase ‘We can build a Beautiful City’ a metaphor because everyone who hears the song knows that it’s not literally about building, even though there are lyrics about bricks.”

Quoting the lyric, I added, “Brick by brick, heart by heart.”

We then looked at “Children of the Wind,” an anthemic song from the Broadway musical Rags set in America in the 1910s with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Stephen. In the piece, the lead character Rebecca sings of herself and her fellow immigrants in the lines “We’re children of the wind/Blown across the earth/Pieces of the heart/Scattered worlds apart….”

Stephen said, “I think it’s great in talking about the value of metaphor that you specifically chose ‘Children of the Wind.’ The final version used in the show was my third lyric try for that melody, and the previous two that did not work were much more literal. One version was called ‘I Will Find the Way’ and it contained straightforward lines like ‘I will find a way to you.’ What she was singing about was literally the story, but it wasn’t effective because it was just the story. It was only when I abandoned that approach and said to Charles, I need to be more poetic and, in fact, more metaphorical, that the song worked. That was such a lesson to me because once the lyrics were right, then all that anyone talked about was how great the music was. And that’s what you want as a lyricist. Even when I’m only providing the lyrics, my goal is that the lyrics will help the music to realize its emotional potential and then that’s what people will notice.”

Extending the Imagery – “Spark of Creation”

Another example I brought was “Spark of Creation”—a piece from Children of Eden sung by the character Eve about her discovery of creativity. I pointed to all the fire images and noted, “The whole thing is a metaphor because we don’t literally have fire in our blood.”

Stephen replied, “When I started writing the song and trying to put myself into that feeling that Eve has of excitement and anticipation, I just felt like my fingertips were tingling. And that’s why the first line was ‘I’ve got an itching in the tips of my fingers.’ It could have been ‘tingling’ now that I think of it, but that was the word that came to me first, plus ‘itching’ is easier to sing. So that was a literal feeling and the rest of it flowed from there, but that was my way in.”

I asked, “Is there something you can say about continuing to look for the metaphors? Because you’ve got (on different lines) ‘boiling,’ ‘burning’, ‘spark,’ ‘blazing,’ and ‘fire.’”

Stephen said, “The metaphor is of fire as an expression of inspiration and creativity. That’s not a new idea obviously—’the creative fire.’ But then in writing about it, I just wanted to keep that image going. Later she says, ‘The spark of creation/may it burn forever…/I am a keeper of the flame.’ The fire image goes through the song because the title demands it. We’ve talked about this before: starting with a title and letting the title determine a lot of what the rest of the song should be.”

Whole Song Metaphor – “Meadowlark”

PHOTO: A meadowlark, photo by Frank Dziedziak (used with permission).

In our discussion of metaphor, of course I brought up “Meadowlark,” his story song from The Baker’s Wife that is known best from the many concert performances or cover versions on albums like those of Patti LuPone, Liz Callaway, and Betty Buckley. In this unusual song, the character even realizes she is exploring a metaphor, in the sense that she is telling a story that she’ll use to reevaluate her own predicament.

Stephen said, “For ‘Meadowlark,’ the entire song is a metaphor, basically, until finally at the end, the last verse describes literally what is going on.”
He didn’t elaborate further during our lunch interview but has previously described the writing of this song. He explained in a website Q and A that the metaphor for “Meadowlark” represents “a story about someone who does what she knows is the ‘right’ thing to do, but then it breaks her heart, and she literally cannot live with the choice… As I was thinking about her expressing the emotions she was going through and feeling them myself as I began to write, this story more-or-less popped into my head.” He remembers it being influenced by several familiar children’s stories, including Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s Nightingale.” (For more detail on how he arrived at the song, see the Schwartz biography, Defying Gravity.)

Similes Too – “For Good”

After looking back at my song list, we conversed about his famous ballad for Elphaba and Glinda, “For Good,” from Wicked, which is filled with similes—the specific type of metaphor that uses “like” or “as.”
Stephen said, “What I had going into ‘For Good’ was this great title that came from a conversation with Winnie [Holzman], and then the conversation I had with my daughter about her relationship with a lifelong friend, which very specifically defined an attitude toward this kind of relationship. And then the rest of it was similes.

“When I work with translators for ‘For Good,’ I often see them struggling to translate ‘Like a comet pulled from orbit’ into Danish or some other language, that is a literal translation of the specific similes I used. I tell them: ‘All you have to do is pick images of something that has an effect on something else. I don’t care what the images are, you have to illustrate the central idea—because I knew you, I’ve been changed—that’s what you’re aiming for. So you have to find images of things that cause a change in other things, but you don’t have to use the same images I did.”

A Window on a Character’s World – “Through Heaven’s Eyes”

We talked next about “Through Heaven’s Eyes,” one of my favorite songs from The Prince of Egypt, used in both the movie version and later stage version, in which the Midian priest character Jethro encourages Moses to take a broader view of his life and worth. We discussed Stephen’s trip to Egypt and how he had seen mountains in the Sinai desert that looked like big piles of rocks before he wrote the lyrics: “And the stone that sits on the very top/Of the mountain’s mighty face/Does it think it’s more important/Than the stones that form the base?”

Stephen noted, “Again the whole song is a metaphor. Basically, what Jethro is saying over and over is: You don’t have the bigger picture of where your life fits in the grand scheme of things, so you can’t dismiss yourself as being worthless—you have no idea. That’s the story of the song. From there, how do you say it? You can say it in one sentence as I just did, but then you have no song!”

We both chuckled.

He continued, “So how do you express that in a way that feels musical and vivid? One uses metaphor. So what I did was consider the character who sings this—what does Jethro see every day? He wouldn’t use a metaphor about a busy city street.”

“Taxis,” I suggested.

Stephen continued with a gesture toward a make-believe line of taxis, “He wouldn’t say ‘One taxicab doesn’t know where the fleet is going.’ Or ‘Does a car in a train think about where the whole train is going?’ Those images don’t belong to him. So you limit your imagery to what comes naturally to the character. We talked about stones on mountains. That’s what you see in that kind of desert landscape—stones on top of stones. And he talks about a tapestry because that’s what they have, and a lost sheep, and so on.”

Meanwhile, back in Connecticut

Stephen Schwartz has a treasure trove of experiences to draw from in conversation, but he also has meetings to attend (mostly on Zoom these days), songs to write, and family responsibilities, and so for now, we wrapped up. Before finishing our lunch, he and I also savored a limoncello gelato, frozen dairy drizzled with a lemon liquor syrup that was an odd combination but very satisfying. It reminded me of the way metaphorical language can pleasingly connect disparate experiences.

FIND OUT MORE

Note: The sheet music with lyrics for many of these songs can be found in the Stephen Schwartz Songbook.

A longer version of this metaphor interview that is specifically oriented to musical writers can be found on MusicalWriters.com: Experiences of a Metaphor-Maker

Enjoy another lunch interview with Stephen Schwartz posted on Musicalwriters.com: Wicked Meets Cinderella and Other Rodgers and Hammerstein Musicals – An Interview with Stephen Schwartz

The Schwartz Scene Newsletter covers Stephen Schwartz’s latest projects. Here are links to the recent issues: Theschwartzscene.com/quarterly-newsletter/archive/

Stephen Schwartz is best known as a writer of Broadway and film songs, but he is sometimes called upon to perform his own pieces. Recently, his friend Paul Lazarus created a podcast from a 1986 radio program and included his interview with Schwartz. On this episode you can hear Schwartz describe his career journey and perform “Fathers And Sons” from Working. You’ll also hear other Schwartz songs: “Magic To Do,” “Butterflies Are Free,” “Day By Day,” “All Good Gifts,” “Corner Of The Sky,” “Simple Joys,” “West End Avenue,” “Chanson,” “Gifts Of Love,” and “I Hear America Singing,”

Regarding “Fathers and Sons,” Schwartz says the song was inspired by a passage from Studs Terkel’s book Working that commented on how “parents aspire for their children to have better lives than they have had themselves. And out of this, I wrote a song based a lot on my feelings for both my own son and my feelings about my father.”

CLICK ON “O3 Stephen Schwartz” BELOW to listen.

https://broadwaypodcastnetwork.com/anything-goes/03-stephen-schwartz/

Read the full story of Working and Schwartz’s career in Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked.

50 Years! Many Ways to Celebrate the Gifts of Godspell

Compiled by Carol de Giere, author of The Godspell Experience

Godspell opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre on May 17, 1971 and was soon selling out every night. With its vibrant Stephen Schwartz score, the hit musical soon went on to become one of the most popularly licensed musicals around the world. Now we celebrate the Godspell 50th Anniversary! Enjoy remembrances and colorful stories in video interviews and articles. What follows is a list of online resources. #godspell #godspell50

DELIGHTFUL VIDEOS for GODSPELL‘s 50th

The Godspell 50th Anniversary Celebration and Trivia Challenge

“The Godspell 50th Anniversary Celebration and Trivia Challenge” by Paul Kreppel (originally suggested by me) includes videos and quiz challenges from such original and early cast members as Peggy Gordon, Robin Lamont, Gilmer McCormick, Marty Short, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy… with ending clips from Victor Garber, Katie Hanley, and dozens of others. Don’t miss this touching, funny, colorful YouTube tribute to the show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-bsCNjwD88

RARE opportunity to hear the original cast! Celebrating Godspell‘s 50th anniversary, Beltline to Broadway will interview original cast members Peggy Gordon, Joanne Jonas, Robin Lamont, Sonia Manzano, Gilmer McCormick, and Stephen Nathan, along with the original music director Stephen Reinhardt. www.youtube.com/watch?v=R48pnaTk70A

ARTICLES AND PODCASTS FOR GODSPELL AT 50

TheatreMania.com: Godspell at 50 – Reminiscences… This interview by David Gordon features “making of” the show comments from several of the original stars: Peggy Gordon, Robin Lamont, and Stephen Nathan. It includes several color photos of the cast from the first production. Theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/godspell-at-50-reminiscences-with-original-stars_92265.html

Godspell.com – “Remembering the Godspell Opening 50 Years Later” Here you’ll find a story from original cast member Joanne Jonas and others. What was it like for Stephen Schwartz and the cast to get ready for the opening? What about preparing the choreography and songs? Read more at: godspell.com/remembering-the-godspell-opening-50-years-later/

BroadwayWorld.com – Article and Video – BroadwayWorld’s piece featured both an article and video with a mix of original cast members, Toronto cast members and others. About 1 hour. “Celebrate 50 Years of GODSPELL with a Mega-Reunion on Backstage LIVE with Richard Ridge” Broadwayworld.com/article/VIDEO-Celebrate-50-Years-of-GODSPELL-with-a-Mega-Reunion-on-Backstage-LIVE-with-Richard-Ridge–Watch-Now-20210517

Playbill.com – Godspell 50th Anniversary Interviews – Victor Garber, Eugene Levy, Uzo Aduba, Andrea Martin and others share Godspell memories. playbill.com/article/victor-garber-eugene-levy-uzo-aduba-andrea-martin-more-share-godspell-memories-to-celebrate-musicals-50th-anniversary

Broadway Radio Podcast with Stephen Schwartz and others: Peter Filichia, James Marino, and Michael Portantiere talk with Stephen Schwartz, Peggy Gordon, and Robin Lamont, about their experiences with Godspell. Broadwayradio.com/blog/2021/05/16/this-week-on-broadway-for-may-16-2021-godspell/

Mark Kennedy of Associated Press filed this report: AP News – Godspell 50 with interview quotes from original cast members Peggy Gordon and Robin Lamont. Kennedy puts the show’s opening in context.

Masterworks Broadway article focuses on recordings and Godspell History. Writer Peter Filichia adds comments from Peggy Gordon and Robin Lamont for his article GODSPELL Day By Day for 50 years. Masterworksbroadway.com/blog/godspell-day-by-day-for-fifty-years-by-peter-filichia/

An article also came out in The Guardian about the original UK The Guardian – Godspell

REVIEWS OF “THE GODSPELL EXPERIENCE” BOOK COVERING THE SHOW HISTORY

Ron Fassler’s new review of The Godspell Experience is here: TheaterPizzazz – blog post on The Godspell Experience includes photos and comments about highlights of the book.

On Stage Blog has inaugurated “Backstage Book Club” with a post about The Godspell Experience featuring photos and an interview with author Carol de Giere. Onstageblog – Carol de Giere and The Godspell Experience FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE GODSPELL EXPERIENCE

The Godspell Experience

THE SCHWARTZ SCENE: Read Stephen Schwartz News for Spring 2021 Theschwartzscene.com/quarterly-newsletter/issue-70-spring-2021/ or view all the issues at Theschwartzscene.com/quarterly-newsletter/archive/

An interview by author Carol de Giere and update from Stephen Schwartz

NOTE ADDED MAY 14, 2019: The following in-person interview explores Stephen Schwartz’s thoughts about Fosse/Verdon, Bob Fosse, and Pippin. At the end, readers will also find an update from Stephen sent by email after he viewed Episode 4.

For Stephen Schwartz, listening to Sam Rockwell’s voice as he plays Bob Fosse in FX’s Fosse/Verdon TV miniseries is a form of déjà vu. “I’ve only seen the first two episodes so far,” he said as of April 22nd when we spoke over lunch. “One thing that amazed me immediately is that Sam Rockwell sounds exactly like Bob. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t actually Bob. He doesn’t look like Bob all the time, but at the period of his life when I knew Bob, he looks a lot like him, and he sounds exactly like him. It’s really an uncanny impression, so that makes it fun.”

As Pippin fans know, Bob Fosse served as director-choreographer, working with Stephen Schwartz (composer-lyricist) and Roger O. Hirson (book) as the show was moving toward the Broadway opening in October 1972.  The Fosse/Verdon series will feature Pippin in episode 4, airing on April 30th.  Schwartz says he is “excited and a little nervous to watch it.”

The focus of the bioseries is the near thirty-year creative, romantic, and often challenging relationship between Fosse and Gwen Verdon. As theater writer David Cote describes the angle of the show in the Observer, “He was a pill-popping, insecure workaholic whose fathomless libido no amount of chorus girls could fill. She was a triple threat who won four Tonys in six years, put her career on hold to be a mother, but stayed hungry for the spotlight.”

Schwartz continues to have a complex opinion of his former colleague, Bob Fosse, who died in 1987. When they worked together, there were many moments of friction, but also admiration, and Schwartz attests that his appreciation of Fosse has grown over the years.

I cover the story of Pippin and the Pippin revival in the 2nd edition of Defying Gravity biography.
caroldegiere.com/defying-gravity/

I know many people who are watching the miniseries. Several questions had come up that I was able to raise with Stephen. At the beginning of our conversation, he expressed his pleasure attending the NYC screening of the first episode and watching the second on television, and then over curry dishes at an Indian restaurant, we continued to explore his response to Fosse/Verdon. (The following transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.)

Carol de Giere: It’s really not showing Bob off. It’s not a positive spin.

Stephen Schwartz: I read some things about the show in an interview with the writer before it premiered, and he said that they were trying to do an honest portrayal of Bob. And you know, he wasn’t a very nice guy.

But he was a very talented guy. The other day I was looking around YouTube and I saw that they had posted a nine-minute video of Bob dancing, some of it with Gwen, and some of it from his early days in movies. He was fantastic. He was like Gene Kelly. I know he always wanted to be Fred Astaire but he was more like Gene Kelly in his athleticism and energy. Seeing those videos gave me a different feeling about him, I have to say. In some ways I wish I had done Pippin in the days when YouTube existed. I think I would have gone into rehearsal with a different kind of regard for Bob, if I had seen those videos of when he was younger.

Of course I already respected him as a director and choreographer. Unlike many other people, I was a fan of the Sweet Charity movie.  And I had seen and admired his work on Broadway…

But watching Fosse/Verdon and seeing his response, which I think is probably accurately depicted, to the failure of the Sweet Charity movie and how desperate he was at the point when he first undertook Pippin, I wish I had known that.  Because don’t forget, Cabaret had not opened yet and he was still doing all the struggling with that movie that the series shows.  But then, the truth is that at twenty-four years old, I was struggling with my own demons, so who knows if it would have changed my relationship to him?

CD: It’s very clear how insecure he was.

SS: Exactly, I had no idea of that. I was a twenty-four-year-old kid; he didn’t present that to me. He just presented his impatience and his inarticulateness.

CD: They are showing him as being manipulative.

SS: I didn’t experience that.  I don’t think he was manipulative with writers.

CD: More with the women of his life?

SS: Maybe more with the women and with performers because he was more comfortable with them.

CD: “Bully” is maybe a better term than “manipulator.”

SS: He was definitely a bully.

CD: Because he wanted his way.

SS: Well, everybody wants his way, but he was truly one of those ‘my way or the highway’ guys.

CD: The cast list doesn’t yet say who is playing you.

SS: I know who is playing me. He’s a recent Carnegie Mellon grad – Jimmy Brewer. He’s very talented. I met him when he was at CMU. He’s exactly who you want to have play you in a movie — He looks a little like me, but he’s taller and much handsomer.  So I’m just delighted that’s how I’m going to be portrayed.

CD: This is something that [our mutual friend] Stuart Friedman found and it’s kind of his question. Why didn’t Gwen play Fastrada in Pippin?

[Stephen read this quote that I brought: “Despite appearances, Fosse still supposedly retained a resentment of his wife, and perversely used it in his next stage show, Pippin. It opened in Washington on September 20, 1972; the character of Fastrada was the title character’s evil stepmother, and modeled on Verdon. She was played by Verdon lookalike Leland Palmer, who would later play the Verdon character in the film All That Jazz, and here she wore a red wig. Cast members felt that Fosse did this to give his wife a kick in the pants and there were rumors that Verdon would go to Washington to see the show.” from Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen by Peter Shelley]

SS: Well, she wouldn’t have done a role that small. Gwen Verdon was a gigantic star—an above the title star.

CD: So, this writer is wrong.

SS: I don’t think it’s true at all. My perception was that Bob’s making Fastrada look and dance like Gwen was because Bob wished that he did have Gwen in the show. I think it was a tribute to her.

And Gwen did come to Washington. I met her very briefly there, just once. In fact, Bob had his whole “brain trust” come to Washington during our out-of-town tryout.  There was Paddy Chayefsky, whom they show in the first episode of Fosse/Verdon, played by our original Fiyero, Norbert Leo Butz, And another playwright named Herb Gardner, who wrote A Thousand Clowns. The two of them came to Washington and Gwen came. And I’m sure they gave Bob a lot of notes and ideas, but I was never privy to what they had to say.  I’d just see them eating, and mostly drinking, in the restaurant at the Watergate Hotel.

What I think is interesting is that he was very friendly with these two famous and accomplished playwrights and never directed anything they wrote. I suspect, if they had ever had him as a director, they might not have been so friendly.

CD: Lin-Manuel Miranda said in one interview that it demolishes the auteur theory that you can be an artistic genius on your own. He’s saying you always have to have the right team marching in the same direction to create something.

SS: I think that’s accurate. They are showing how dependent Bob was on Gwen. But “auteur” or not, I think it has to be acknowledged that Bob, more than any choreographer of his time and since, had an unbelievably specific and instantly recognizable style.  Think how hard that is to achieve — a choreographer whose work you can see and immediately know that’s whom it’s by.  Try to think of another Broadway choreographer of whom that’s true.

It’s extraordinary to have created a choreographic voice still influential 50 years later. I just saw the revival of Kiss Me, Kate and in the middle of “Too Darn Hot,” all of a sudden there’s this move where the dancers all slouch and snap their fingers, and immediately you think Bob Fosse. That’s an extraordinary achievement. Maybe some of his style was developed with and because of Gwen, but in the end, it was his.

Listen, I didn’t like Bob as a person. He was difficult to collaborate with. He was a nasty guy. He was a bully.  But my admiration for him was strong then and has only grown stronger over the years.

CD: A different thing about Pippin, people were asking about Jill Clayburgh and …Betty Buckley… wondering why Betty didn’t get the role in the first place….

SS: I don’t remember if she came in when we were initially casting. I know I brought her up because I knew her from 1776. And Stuart [Ostrow, the producer] knew her very well because Stuart produced both shows, so of course she was on everybody’s mind.

CD: But they wanted a movie star.

SS: Well, someone who was going to be a movie star. I remember when Jill Clayburgh came in, and I thought she was lovely, and of course, she read very well, but I said, ‘I don’t think she sings well enough for the role.’ And Bob said, ‘She’s going to be a movie star, take my word for it, and I think we need that in this role.’

CD: Do you know anything about how much of Pippin is going to be in Fosse/Verdon?

(Link to Pippin revival cast album)

SS: Well, they licensed a lot of the songs. How many they are going to end up using, and how much is going to wind up on the cutting room floor, I don’t know.

CD: It will all be based on Sam Wasson’s book Fosse.

SS: Yeah, but I saw the script because I had to approve the scenes in which I’m portrayed.

CD: Oh, you did. I wouldn’t have known that.

SS: I actually made a couple of suggestions to them, which they took—suggestions about accuracy. For instance, they had a disagreement between Bob and Roger [Hirson, the bookwriter] and me that Bob wanted to make the “Glory” sequence more anti-war, more gruesome.  But actually that wasn’t true.  Because don’t forget it was the time of the Vietnam War, and I was very opposed to the Vietnam War, and that was part of what we were writing about.  What Bob wanted to do was emphasize the sexiness of the war sequence and how people kind of get off on war.  That was something Roger and I didn’t get at first, so that was what the disagreement was about. And at least in the final version of the script that I saw, the writers of Fosse/Verdon changed that.

Anyway, I’m excited about the show. It’s been very interesting to watch so far, and I think they’ve done a really good job with it. You can be sure I’ll be watching April 30th!

EPISODE 4 UPDATE

I asked Stephen Schwartz if he could send me comments after watching the FOSSE/VERDON episode about Pippin. See his email message below:

SCHWARTZ: I really liked the Pippin episode of Fosse/Verdon. I thought it was the strongest so far, but maybe that’s just me being solipsistic. In any event, I liked how the writers used material from Pippin to reflect Bob’s own psychological struggles, and I especially admired the use of “I Guess I’ll Miss the Man” for Nicole, which I found quite moving (and well performed by the young actress playing Nicole). It was uncanny how apt the lyrics were (except for the last line). I thought it showed the continuing relevance and resonance of Pippin in terms of its underlying emotional content, and it made me newly proud of the show.

In terms of how I was portrayed, as I’ve said before, it was nice to be played by someone who sort of resembles me, only taller and better-looking. I thought Jimmy did a great job, and they got my 1972 hairstyle and clothing-style right (embarrassing as the latter now seems). The actual incidents they showed were not really accurate in terms of the specific content or what was said, but they captured the truth of the experience of working with Bob on the show.

It interested me that they emphasized Bob’s dissatisfaction with the ending, since as most people know, we eventually found what I think is the right ending for the show several years after Bob passed away. As I’ve said before, it’s one I think he would have been happy with if any of us had thought of it then. I’m glad we’ve been able to solve that issue that bugged us all and that now all productions do the new ending; it’s just too bad that for Bob, it proved to be posthumous.

MORE SCHWARTZ NEWS: Please see the Spring 2019 issue of The Schwartz Scene newsletter for additional news from Stephen Schwartz’s world.

PHOTO BELOW: Carol de Giere and Stephen Schwartz at the lunch interview.

Matthew Sklar, composer for the current Broadway musical The Prom and earlier Broadway shows The Wedding Singer and Elf, has often turned to Stephen Schwartz’s work for inspiration. He remembers practicing with the sheet music for Pippin as a pre-teen and he now follows in the tradition of pop-oriented songwriters like Schwartz, Alan Menken, and others. Sklar and his collaborator Chad Beguelin received a jump start at an ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, receiving feedback from Stephen Schwartz, who directs the workshop, and his panelists.

The Prom, with music by Sklar and book by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin, opened on November 15, 2018 to rave reviews. It includes several delightful references to Godspell and Wicked, so Schwartz fans visiting New York City may enjoy it. www.theprommusical.com. After seeing The Prom myself and enjoying the cast recording, I was eager to interview Matt and discover his story. We met up at a Manhattan restaurant on March 8th. The following are a few points from our conversation. 

GETTING STARTED ON BROADWAY

Matt Sklar: The connection for [the first show] The Wedding Singer was through The Rhythm Club that almost came to Broadway in 2001. We developed The Rhythm Club at the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop with Stephen Schwartz who was incredibly helpful getting the show on its feet. Chad and I submitted two shows in 1998: one was fully done and also The Rhythm Club on sort of a whim, and it turned out they chose that. We had to present 45 minutes of the show and we didn’t have much ready, so we wrote a lot of The Rhythm Club just for the ASCAP workshop presentation. We got a lot of feedback. Stephen was amazing.

From that workshop we got commercial producers. They were people I knew and so I invited them to ASCAP saying, ‘We’re going to do a presentation of this show; I’d love to know what you think.’ The producers brought Billy Rosenfield who used to be at RCA so the three of them came. Right after that they optioned the show, and we got busy completing it. Then we did a bunch of readings and did it at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA. For Broadway we got as far as having a theatre booked, our artwork and billboard in Shubert Alley, and a company ready to begin rehearsals. And then the money fell through. It was awful. But one of the people who attended one of our readings was Margo Lion, and after that she approached Chad and me and said, ‘I think you guys are very talented; I would love to find something to work on with you.’ …. [that eventually led to the New Line Cinema project with Margo Lion and Mark Kaufman.] New Line Cinema had the rights to The Wedding Singer movie and they thought they could possibly make it into a musical. They wanted a team that grew up in the 80s, as I did.

Carol de Giere: So, the moral of the story is to work your connections? And be in the right place at the right time?

MS: Well, that part was the lucky part, but you can draw a straight line from the ASCAP musical theatre workshop to The Prom. For every single project, I met somebody that came along for the ride or introduced me to somebody else. It’s all stepping stones….

GODSPELL, PIPPIN, AND WICKED INFLUENCES

CD: You have a lot of Elphaba, Glinda, and Godspell references.

MS: Of course. We love Stephen Schwartz.

CD: Were you listening to him as you grew up?

MS: Oh yeah, absolutely. One of the first shows I fell in love with was Pippin. I remember buying the vocal score to that at Colony Music in junior high and just practicing it over and over again. I was in a couple of productions of Godspell in high school, and I music directed a production of Godspell at NYU, which is how I met Chad. I met him through someone who saw me music direct that show and said, ‘Do you ever write songs? I think you should meet this guy Chad.’ Stephen’s music has always been a big part of my life, so meeting him at ASCAP was great. He’s like the best teacher in the world. A lot of us are very grateful to him.

CD: You and Chad put Godspell in the show. [There’s a scene in which cast members from a touring Godspell production come on stage. It also features a song “Love Thy Neighbor” that covers Bible passages as interpreted in modern times. “Love thy neighbor trumps them all” is a refrain of this piece led by the character Trent who has been on the Godspell tour.]

MS: The choice to have Trent star in Godspell was made because we wanted to write a song about people who are hypocritical about the Bible and how they cherry pick which parts they want to believe. That’s where the story had to go. We wanted Trent to be the one who gets through to the kids in this small town. We had to figure out how to do that and do it in a way that was fun and also made sense for him to be interacting with them. So, we decided he had to be playing Jesus Christ in a musical, so that he’s very familiar with the Bible. I think we were in a work session one day and Chad and I both said, ‘I literally know everything I know about religion from Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Children of Eden, and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.’ So, we had to pick one of those shows. And the one that seemed the most fun was Godspell, which has so many wonderful different styles of music that we could explore, so that’s why we decided to go that route.

CD: And then the makeover scene is obviously Wicked-related.

MS: Exactly. Chad literally put it in the lyric: you be Elphie, I’m Galinda. [Wicked characters.]

MORE NOTES ABOUT THE PROM

The Prom is richly entertaining with a near constant stream of witticisms and comic moments. It also has quiet scenes, one of which features the song “Unruly Heart,” that offers a similar message to “Defying Gravity” only in ballad form. And watching the full cast perform the finale “It’s Time to Dance” is a bit like watching the Ozdust Ballroom slip out of Wicked‘s Oz into contemporary America.

(To read more points from this interview, see my article with tips for musical writers from Sklar at Musicalwriters.com – From Pizza Readings to Broadway)
View The Prom highlights on this video:

https://youtu.be/66UhXFDMlRI

Carol de Giere is the author of Defying Gravity: the Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked (first and second editions) and The Godspell Experience: Inside a Transformative Musical. Visit caroldegiere.com to find out more about the books.

Matthew Sklar wrote the music and co-wrote vocal arrangements for the currently running Broadway musical The Prom. He is the Tony, Emmy and Drama Desk Award-nominated composer of the Broadway musicals Elf and The Wedding Singer (Tony nomination for Best Original Score, Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Music). He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction for the critically acclaimed NBC stop-motion animated TV special “Elf: Buddy’s Musical Christmas.” Additional TV/film credits include “Sesame Street,” “Wonder Pets!” and PBS’s “American Masters.” Awards include the ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, the Gilman/Gonzalez-Falla Theatre Award and the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation. Visit matthewsklar.com

Among the many highlights of a November 19th benefit concert in Manhattan was watching Stephen Schwartz at the piano singing “For Good” from Wicked with the amazing group of actors who contributed their talents to this fundraiser. In fact, as the song lyric says, “I have been changed for good” expressed the feeling of exhilaration in the room after hearing so many powerful performances. Held at The Cutting Room, the “Orphaned Songs for Orphaned Starfish” concert featured legendary Broadway stars, two American Idol finalists, an Elphaba and a Glinda from Wicked, Godspell cast members from the original Off-Broadway production, and many more. At the emotional center was a collection of Stephen Schwartz songs that entertained and moved us, along with the importance of the fundraising cause. (osf.org)

Here are a few stories about the celebration. More photos can be found at BroadwayWorld.com Photo Coverage by Stephen Sorokoff 

A Tennis Match as the Initial Spark

Years earlier, Schwartz happened to play tennis in a tournament with Andy Stein, founder and executive chairman of the Orphaned Starfish Foundation. The two became friends and the Foundation’s efforts for orphans and other disadvantaged children around the world became one of the causes Schwartz supported. Then in 2018, while making plans for the release of Defying Gravity’s updated second edition, I asked if Stephen would agree to participate in a concert that did double duty: support the foundation, and serve as a launch for the book. Both he and Andy Stein agreed to the concept and the project expanded from there.

For concert efforts in the fall, music director Michael Lavine served as the hub of the wheel, making connections and rehearsing performers in his studio. Paul Kreppel provided direction.

While Stephen was busy working on his own projects, I met with Michael and Paul to decide on the songs and consider performers.

Once Ben Vereen came on board, it was obvious that the evening should begin with Vereen reprising the opening number “Magic to Do” from the Leading Player role he originated in Broadway’s Pippin.

On November 19th, about 200 people filled the tables and balconies of The Cutting Room for the celebration of song. Scott Coulter as emcee kept the pace lively and helped integrate the many pieces of the evening.

Justin Guarini started the party with “Which Way’s the Party” from Wicked, one of a series of “orphaned songs” cut from their original musicals. Adam Jacobs sang “Marking Time” cut from Pippin and its replacement, “Extraordinary” and Robbie Berson performed the perky “Neat to be a Newsboy” piece cut from the revised version of Working. Along a similar line, Jenn Gambatese sang the original ballad introduction to “Spark of Creation” that Schwartz cut from the London version of Children of Eden, and then she sang the up-tempo version of the song known to all fans of the show.

Stephen Schwartz himself explored the orphaned song concept by describing and playing his work on “Making Good” for Wicked, and then accompanying Laurel Harris as she belted the replacement song,  “The Wizard and I.”

Tony Award winners Alice Ripley and Daisy Eagan sang the “Two’s Company” duet from the less familiar musical The Magic Show that played on Broadway in the 1970s. Later Ripley, who has performed the title role in The Baker’s Wife, returned to the stage to sing a Schwartz standard, “Meadowlark.”

The evening’s most visually dazzling moment came while Constantine Maroulis sang “Wings of a Swan” from the rarely heard My Fairy Tale, while Georgina Pazcoguin, a soloist with the New York City Ballet, offered a swan-like dance.

Lilly ‘Ogichidaa Ikwenzens’ Linden, whom the Orphaned Starfish Foundation brought to NYC for the concert, captivated the audience with her rendition of “Colors of the Wind.” She provided a direct connection to children served by the Foundation, as they had recently added a computer center at the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota.

Margot Bingham performed “Lucky” from Schwartz’s opera Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Jacob Dickey as “Moses” and Blaine Krauss as “Ramses” introduced the duet “I Will Make it Right/No Power on Earth” from the new stage musical The Prince of Egypt.

Those with nostalgia for the early Schwartz musicals Pippin and Godspell were treated to Christine Pedi’s rendition of “No Time at All,” followed by a gaggle of Godspellers singing a medley of songs from the show. Paul Shaffer took over the piano and led the Godspell tribute performed by Lucia Giannetta, Peggy Gordon, Paul Kreppel, Patti Mariano, Nancy McGraw, Mark Planner, Alice Ripley, and Don Scardino, along with the Godspell all-star band: Steve Manes, bass; Mark Zeray, guitar; Rick Shutter, drums.

Later the cast enjoyed moments on the red carpet.

Afterward, Dilia Stein praised everyone involved in the “magnificent and heartfelt evening.” Andy Stein stated: “There are not enough words to say how thankful we are to the legendary Stephen Schwartz for his incredible support of the children of the Orphaned Starfish Foundation; to Michael Lavine, Paul Kreppel and Carol de Giere who made this a reality; and to all the wonderful Broadway stars who donated their performances that made tonight so very special. This night exceeded our expectations in all ways and raised much needed funding for the programs of the Orphaned Starfish Foundation. The funds raised at the event will support computer teachers across the world to make a difference in the future of more than 13,000 lives of orphans, survivors of abuse and trafficking, indigenous peoples and at-risk youth. Tonight made more of a difference than we ever could have imagined to support our initiative in developing computer training centers in Native American Reservations.”

My personal thanks to everyone involved in making this evening such a memorable success. Read about the shows and songs of Stephen Schwartz in the 2nd edition of Defying Gravity. Visit CaroldeGiere.com – Defying Gravity page.

Related concerts can be arranged in your local area through Scott Coulter’s company Spot-onentertainment.com, including “Stephen Schwartz and Friends,” “Defying Gravity: The Music of Stephen Schwartz,” and other themed events.

Photos in this article are by Dan Marino danmarinophoto.com and Stephen Sorokoff.