Stephen Schwartz Musical News

Updates from the world of Broadway and film composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz and biographer Carol de Giere — a fan newsletter.

1) Welcome from Carol

I have news direct from the source. In this issue you’ll find Stephen Schwartz’s comments drawn from my November 1st Zoom interview with him. We spoke about his Wicked movie music work, Disenchanted soundtrack, a new Picasso-related musical, and more.

We also commemorate Pippin’s 50th birthday and Stephen’s remarkable first Broadway score with our blog post about the show’s legacy (linked to below).

Ready for the holidays? I have a fresh batch of copies of my books signed by Stephen Schwartz in stock for gift giving or as memorabilia: Defying Gravity and The Godspell Experience. The books are also available from Amazon.com and elsewhere. Please see https://caroldegiere.com/books

For future updates please LIKE our Facebook – Schwartz Scene page where I post news periodically. You can also check Stephen’s official site StephenSchwartz.com news section for updates.

2) Stephen Schwartz Movie Musicals – Wicked and Disenchanted Soundtracks

Wicked Movies Music and Soundtrack Notes

In mid-November, Stephen Schwartz will travel to the UK to join those already assembled for the Wicked movies. In the meantime, he has been working remotely with his Wicked music team via Zoom or Facetime. He says, “I’ve been going back and forth with my music team, especially Stephen Oremus, whose official title is ‘Executive Music Producer.’ I know, I don’t know what that means either. But he’s basically doing what he did on the stage show, which is teach and rehearse the songs to the actors, work with me on vocal arrangements, eventually conduct the orchestra when the time comes to do that, and help produce the soundtrack with me and Greg Wells.

“Greg is a great musician, engineer and producer, whom I’ve actually known since he was a teenager and we worked together on a Jane Olivor tour. Now he’s one of the best-known and best-respected music producers in the business. The other member of my ‘dream team’ is Dominic Amendum, who was my music supervisor on The Prince of Egypt but knows Wicked well from having served as musical director of the Broadway production. It’s been really fun so far, and I’m looking forward to being there in person.

“Right now we’ve been working on tracks for the singers to rehearse to and also for Jon M. Chu, our director, to be able to work out staging for the movie. They’ve all been rehearsing in the UK since Labor Day. But when I go over in a couple of weeks, it will be to pre-record lead vocals for the actual soundtrack. And then they start shooting, I believe in early December.”

Describing the current approach to creating the soundtrack, Stephen explains, “When the entire movie is done and put together and we know what the soundtrack is going to be, then at the very end we’ll deal with a live orchestra. I find it an interesting way to do it and the benefits of it are obvious: It’s very nimble in that you can make changes quickly, and it’s also much more cost effective than recording cues with a big orchestra that then have to be revised and re-recorded.”

When I asked further about live recording versus pre-recording, he said, “I believe the intention is for us to pre-record all the vocals, but then during filming also to do takes where they sing live, because we have exceptionally good singers in the leading roles. And a lot of care is being taken to make sure that it’s the same miking, so that one can cut between the live performance and studio performance if desired. We haven’t started shooting yet so we’ll see how it goes.”

About new songs he adds, “There are two new songs in the second movie that are complete songs in themselves, and then there are new sections in some of the existing songs in both movies. All the new material, of course, is to meet the demands of the storytelling.”

Wicked Movies Cast and Creatives – Updates Since Our Summer 2022 Issue

“I think the casting choices so far are very smart. They’re not necessarily whom you would expect, but when you really think about them, you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s a really good idea.’ And I’ve felt that with the whole cast.” –Stephen Schwartz, November 2022

Jonathan Stuart Bailey will play Fiyero opposite Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. He is an English actor with many credits both for stage and screen, and is known most recently for his starring role in Netflix’s Bridgerton series. (PHOTO: Cover for a Bridgerton book featuring an image of Jonathan and his co-star.) Jeff Goldblum has been tapped for the Wizard. Other cast members will be announced in the future.

Dancing Through Life: The Wicked movie will feature new choreography by Christopher Scott. Scott has worked with Jon Chu before. He told The Wrap, “We’ve been working together for 10 years, so we already had a system for getting a project together, a shorthand….With Jon, our process starts with sitting down in a room to listen to the songs. We ramble off a ton of ideas, he writes them on a whiteboard as we go, then we circle our favorites.”

New Costumes: Paul Tazewell is designing Wicked’s costumes. If you saw Hamilton or The Wiz! Live you will have an idea of how creative he can be. Tazewell has designed for Broadway, theater, dance, and film. For Hamilton he won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Musical.

The Disenchanted Soundtrack and Movie

Disenchanted begins streaming on Disney plus on November 18. For the price of a few lattes, anyone can subscribe for a month to enjoy Disenchanted, the original Enchanted, and many other films.

Stephen Schwartz, who served as the movie’s lyricist in his fourth movie collaboration with composer Alan Menken, has yet to see the completed movie. “I’ll be watching along with everyone else when it’s on Disney+ later this month. Needless to say, I hope the movie has turned out well, but truly, I have no idea.”

He recently worked on mastering the soundtrack album at a studio in Los Angeles. “I thought it came out very well and I’m especially pleased that two songs that were cut from the movie are on at least one of the versions of the soundtrack recording.”

3. Stephen Schwartz Stage Musicals Updates and Related News

Several stage musicals have also been absorbing Stephen’s creative time. One has yet to be announced and we will cover it in a future issue. Another is in the pipeline. A Picasso-related piece is a third.

Picasso Musical Project

As was made public in September, Stephen Schwartz is working on a new musical project related to the artist Pablo Picasso. Antonio Banderas is set to star and helped to conceive the show. Gordon Greenberg is co-writing the book with Caridad Svich and will direct the first production, due to premiere at Banderas’ Teatro del Soho in Málaga, Spain, Picasso’s birthplace. Currently the theatre is presenting a Spanish-language production of Godspell.

Stephen said in our Zoom interview, “I haven’t started writing any music or lyrics yet, but I’ve been working with Gordon and Caridad on the structure and outline.”

He describes one of the themes that interested him: “I think that a lot of people in the arts these days are questioning if art has any real value in a world that seems to be in such dire shape. Does art serve a purpose at all? Or is it just self-indulgence on the part of the artist, or at best, a momentary distraction? A lot of people that I talk to in the arts are wrestling with that. And there was a particular time in Picasso’s life and work where that question was very much at the forefront of what was going on with him, and that will be one of the main focuses of the show.”

I suggested that people are likely to compare it with the musical Sunday in the Park with George. Stephen replied, “Well, of course. Sunday in the Park is one of my favorite musicals. It’s very meaningful to me personally, and I admire the show enormously. And before undertaking this new project, I did think about if there was anything that I and my collaborators had to say that wasn’t already said in Sunday in the Park, and said very well. But Sunday in the Park takes for granted that art matters; it doesn’t deal with, as far as I can see, the purpose of art and its impact on the world, so what it’s concerned with thematically is quite different from what we would be dealing with in this show about Picasso. And as Sunday in the Park reflects what James Lapine and Steve Sondheim felt about art and their relationship to it, I assume this show will reflect my feelings and those of my collaborators.”

On Being Creatively Engaged

Stephen loves being creatively occupied, especially in contrast with the pandemic challenges. He reflects, “I had a lot of difficulty with the pandemic emotionally and psychologically. I was pretty blue. I wasn’t doing any work, and that didn’t feel good to me. I realize in retrospect that I could have written a symphony or something, but I didn’t. I couldn’t really get myself to do much of anything creative. But I did learn something about myself during the pandemic: I came to realize that what I really love is the collaborative aspect of what I do, whether it’s for theatre or for film or whatever. I like bouncing ideas off of other people – the best idea in the room wins, that kind of thing. I don’t really like to work just by myself. And so I didn’t (he laughs) for two years essentially. Thank goodness for Disenchanted, because it was basically the only thing I did for those two years. So I’m really happy to be working on a few collaborative projects now.”

Pippin’s Magic – Read about the Show’s Legacy – SPECIAL TO THE SCHWARTZ SCENE

Stephen Schwartz’s work on the musical Pippin has helped inspire musical writers as well as fans. Enjoy our guest blog post by Shawn McCarthy in honor of the golden anniversary of Pippin’s Broadway opening. 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.

READ IT HERE: https://www.theschwartzscene.com/2022/10/23/the-pippin-score-had-magic-to-do-an-influential-legacy/

New Book!

Elysa Gardner is a long-time theater journalist and critic whose reviews I have enjoyed. For her book Magic To Do: Pippin’s Fantastic, Fraught Journey to Broadway and Beyond, Elysa drew from my Stephen Schwartz biography Defying Gravity, direct interviews with Stephen, interviews with original cast members, background materials I sent her, and her own extensive research.

Chapters cover the show’s history and development, the Broadway revival, and more. The 212-page book includes an inset of color photos. https://amzn.to/3n2X0Up (affiliate link)

Pippin The 50th Anniversary Original Broadway Cast Reunion Concert February 6 at 7pm & 9:30pm

The concert sold out almost immediately when it was first announced, and they’ve now added another date and made one performer change. The legendary 1972 original Broadway cast members, including Tony Award® winner John Rubinstein, Joy Franz, and others will share stories and songs from the landmark Tony Award®-winning musical!
https://54below.com/events/pippin-the-50th-anniversary-original-broadway-cast-reunion-concert/

Children of Eden Concert

The organizers of the October 15th Chicago concert performances of Children of Eden are working on a video recording that they hope to stream in the future. The cast was led by Grammy Award-winning recording artist and Broadway alum Michelle Williams as Eve and Mama Noah, Broadway Les Misérables star Randal Keith as Father, and others. Watch The Schwartz Scene Facebook page for future messages.

Read behind-the-scenes stories in Defying Gravity

Explore the career story of this remarkable artist, Stephen Schwartz.  Defying Gravity takes readers through the making of Wicked, Godspell, Children of Eden, and other shows and movies. The book includes a series of “Creativity Notes” that reveal some of Schwartz’s creative strategies.

“In Defying Gravity, Carol de Giere pulls back the curtain and gives us a fascinating glimpse into the creative process of one of the musical theater’s greatest wizards.” ~Stephen Flaherty
Tony Award-winning composer (Anastasia, Ragtime, Once on this Island)

https://caroldegiere.com/defying-gravity/

Previous Issues of The Schwartz Scene

If you missed previous issues, our back issue index is at Back issue archive. You’ll find news and online interviews with Stephen Schwartz.

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About this online fan newsletter: The Schwartz Scene is an independent publication written for musical theater and film enthusiasts who appreciate the work of American composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz. It does not formally represent composer Stephen Schwartz, although the editor, Carol de Giere, is in regular contact with the Schwartz office for updates and approval of his quotations. Send questions or comments by message at http://facebook.com/theschwartzscene (preferred) or by email to carol1 (at) caroldegiere (dot) com

Copyright 2022 by Carol de Giere. Carol de Giere has exclusive rights, unless otherwise specified, for all materials included in the newsletter. Permission must be secured in writing before any part of it may be reprinted, except for the printing of one copy for the subscriber’s private use. Editor: Carol de Giere, 10 Library Place #909, Bethel CT 06801-0909.