- Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (b. March 22 1930) is widely seen as his generation's leading writer of the stage musical. Described by Frank Rich in the "The New York Times" as "the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater," he is one of the few people to win an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards (seven, more than any other composer), multiple Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. - Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948) is a highly successful English composer of musical theatre, and also the elder brother of Julian Lloyd Webber. Lloyd Webber has enjoyed great popular success, with several musicals that have run for more than a decade both on Broadway and in the West End. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, … - Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28 1902 - December 30 1979) was one of the great composers of musical theater, best known for his song writing partnerships with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. He wrote more than 900 published songs, and forty Broadway musicals. Many of his compositions continue to have a broad appeal and have had a significant impact on the development of popular music. - Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein (August 25 1918 – October 14 1990) was an American conductor, composer, and pianist. He was the first conductor born in the United States of America to receive world-wide acclaim, and is known for both his conducting of the New York Philharmonic, including the acclaimed "Young People's Concerts" series, and his multiple compositions, including "West Side Story", … - Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 - October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter from Indiana. His works include the musical comedies "Kiss Me, Kate" (1948) (based on Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew"), "Fifty Million Frenchmen" and "Anything Goes", as well as songs like "Night and Day," "I Get a Kick Out of You," and "I've Got You Under My Skin." He was noted for his sophisticated (sometimes ribald) lyrics, clever rhymes, … - Jason Robert Brown
Jason Robert Brown (born 1970 in Ossining, New York) is an American musical theater composer and lyricist. Often cited as one of the "New School" of theatrical composers (a list that includes Michael John LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, Andrew Lippa and Jeanine Tesori, among others), Brown's music sensibility fuses pop-rock stylings with theatrical lyrics. An accomplished pianist, Brown has often served as music director, conductor, orchestrator and pianist for his own productions. - Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 - November 11, 1945) was an American composer of popular music. He wrote around 700 songs, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "A Fine Romance", and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", and more than 100 complete scores for shows and films, including "Show Boat", in a career lasting from 1902 until his death. Jerome Kern was born in New York City. His parents, Fanny and Henry Kern, were both German Jews. - Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March, 1947) is a five-time Grammy and one-time Academy Award-winning English pop/rock singer, composer and pianist. In his four-decade career, John has been one of the dominant forces in rock and popular music, especially in the 1970s. John has sold more than 250 million albums plus hundreds of millions of singles, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. - Stephen Schwartz
Stephen Lawrence Schwartz (born March 6, 1948) is an American musical theater lyricist and composer. - Adam Guettel
Adam Guettel (pronounced "Gettle"; b. 1965), son of Mary Rodgers and grandson of legendary composer Richard Rodgers, is an American musical theater composer and lyricist best known for 2005's "The Light in the Piazza", for which he won a Tony Award. He can also be heard in a duet with singer Jessica Molaskey on her album Make Believe for the P.S. Classics label. - Jonathan Larson
Jonathan Larson was an American composer and playwright who lived in New York City and authored musicals, including "Rent" and "Tick, Tick... BOOM!". These musicals tackle serious issues such as multiculturalism, addiction, homophobia, and the AIDS epidemic. His artistic vision and goal was to fuse Generation X and the MTV Generation with the world of musical theatre in his work. This mission was somewhat accomplished by his magnum opus, "Rent", … - Michael John Lachiusa
Michael John LaChiusa (born 1962) is an American musical theatre composer and lyricist best known for his unusual sounding compositions for shows in the "post-modern" school. He has been nominated for 5 Tony Awards for his book (with Graciela Daniele and Jim Lewis) for "Chronicle of a Death Foretold", for his books for "Marie Christine" and (with George C. Wolfe) "The Wild Party", and his scores for "Marie Christine" and "The Wild Party". - Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (May 11, 1888 - September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist, one of the most prodigious and famous American songwriters in history. Berlin was one of the few Tin Pan Alley/Broadway songwriters who wrote both lyrics and music for his songs. Although he never learned to read music beyond a rudimentary level, he composed over 3,000 songs, many of which ("God Bless America", "White Christmas", "Alexander's Ragtime Band", … - Björn Ulvaeus
Björn Kristian Ulvaeus (born April 25, 1945) is a Swedish musician and composer, most notable as a member of ABBA. Ulvaeus was born in Gothenburg, but as a child he moved with his family to Västervik. Ulvaeus studied Business and Law at the Lund University after doing his Military Service with stand-up comedian Magnus Holmström Prior to gaining international recognition as a member of ABBA, Björn was a member of the Hootenanny Singers. - Noel Coward
Sir Noel Peirce Coward was an English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music. His forename is sometimes spelled with a diaeresis on the 'e' ("Noël"). Coward himself used this spelling only in later life. - Jerry Herman
Jerry Herman (born Gerald Herman on July 10, 1931 in New York City) is an American composer/lyricist of the Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals "Hello, Dolly!", "Mame", and "La Cage aux Folles". - Mary Rodgers
Mary Rodgers (born January 11, 1931) is an American composer of musicals, an author of children's books, and the daughter of Broadway composer Richard Rodgers. Rodgers' musical works include "Once Upon a Mattress" (1959), "From A to Z" (1960), "Hot Spot" (1963), "The Mad Show" (1966), "Working" (1978), and Phyllis Newman's one-woman show "The Madwoman of Central Park West" (1979). - Jerry Bock
Jerry Bock (born November 23 1928) is a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning American musical theatre composer. Born in New Haven, Connecticut and raised in Flushing, New York, Bock studied the piano as a child. He attended the University of Wisconsin, where he wrote the musical "Big As Life", which toured the state and enjoyed a run in Chicago. - George Gershwin
George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 - July 11, 1937) was an American composer. He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin composed both for Broadway and for the classical concert hall. He also wrote popular songs with success. Many of his compositions have been used on television and in numerous films, and many became jazz standards. - Claude-Michel Schönberg
Claude-Michel Schönberg is a French record producer, actor, singer, popular songwriter, and musical theatre composer, best known for his collaborations with the librettist Alain Boublil. These include the musicals: *"La Révolution Française" (1973) *"Les Misérables" (1980) *"Miss Saigon" (1989) *"Martin Guerre" (1996) *"The Pirate Queen" (2006) Schönberg began his career as a record producer and a singer. - Frank Wildhorn
Frank Wildhorn is an American composer. In 1999, Wildhorn became the first American composer in twenty two years to have three shows running simultaneously on Broadway: "Jekyll & Hyde" at the Plymouth Theatre, "The Scarlet Pimpernel" at the Minskoff, and "The Civil War" at the St. James Theatre. Currently, he is engaged to Brandi Burkhardt. His fiancée is currently on Passions, playing the contract role of Siren, … - Jule Styne
Jule Styne (December 31, 1905 - September 20, 1994) was a British-born American songwriter, especially famous for a series of Broadway Musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows. - Lionel Monckton
Lionel John Alexander Monckton (18 December 1861 - 15 September 1924) was a British writer and composer of musical theatre. He was Britain's most popular musical theatre composer of the early years of the 20th century. - John Kander
John Kander , the composer half of the legendary songwriting team, Kander and Ebb that has produced Cabaret , Woman of the Year , The Act and the incomparable Chicago , was born in Kansas City, Missouri on March 18, 1927. Kander began studying music as a child and in his early career worked as a conductor and accompanying pianist for many productions. From 1955 through 1958, Kander was choral director and conductor for the Warwick Musical Theatre in Rhode Island. - William Finn
William Finn (born 28 February 1952) is an award-winning American composer and lyricist, especially of musicals. - Maury Yeston
Maury Yeston is an American composer and lyricist educated at Yale and Clare College, Cambridge. Yeston knew from a young age that he wanted to write music for the stage after his mother took him to see a production of "My Fair Lady" when he was 10. While in the graduate music program at Yale, … - Cy Coleman
Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist. He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida (née Prizent) was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason. He was a child prodigy who gave piano recitals at Steinway Hall, Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall between the ages of six and nine. - Petula Clark
Petula Clark, CBE (born November 15 1932), is an English singer, actress and composer best known for her upbeat popular international hits of the 1960s. With more than 70 million records sold worldwide, she is the most successful British female solo recording artist to date, and is cited as such in the Guinness Book of World Records. She also holds the distinction of having the longest span on the international pop charts of any artist - 51 years - from 1954, … - Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen was an American composer of popular music. One of the greatest composers of 20th century popular music, with over 400 songs, a number of which have become known the world over. His 1938 song "Over the Rainbow” was voted the twentieth century's No. 1 song by the Recording Industry Association of America [1<nowiki>;</nowiki>;]. - Andrew Lippa
Andrew Lippa is an American composer, lyricist, book writer, performer, and producer, and the resident artist at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City. He went to Oak Park High School in Oak Park, Michigan. He was born on December 22, 1964 in Leeds, England. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Lippa began work in New York in 1987 as a middle school teacher and administrator at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School. He then went on to a successful music career. - Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 - April 3, 1950), was a German, and in his later years German-American, composer active from the 1920s until his death. He was a leading composer for the stage, as well as writing a number of concert works. Over fifty years after his death, his music continues to be performed both in popular and classical contexts. In Weill's lifetime, his work was most associated with the voice of his wife, Lotte Lenya, … - Alan Menken
Alan Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American Broadway and Academy Award winning film score composer and pianist. Menken has collaborated with several renowned lyricists including Howard Ashman (1950-1991), Tim Rice and Stephen Schwartz. He is best known for his work on several Disney animated features, including "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Hercules", "Pocahontas", "Aladdin", … - Marvin Hamlisch
Marvin Hamlisch (born June 2, 1944) is an American composer - Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an Academy Award-nominated American composer. His music is frequently described as "minimalist", though he prefers the term "theater music". He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public (apart from precursors such as Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein), … - Leslie Stuart
Leslie Stuart (15 March 1863 - 27 March 1928) was an English composer of early musical theatre, best known for the hit show "Florodora" (1899) and many popular songs. He was born in Southport as Thomas Augustine Barrett. - Charles Strouse
Charles Strouse, is an American composer and three-time winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical. Charles Strouse’s music has been an integral part of American culture for over forty years. His first Broadway musical was the smash hit BYE BYE BIRDIE (written with long time collaborator Lee Adams). - Frank Loesser
Frank Henry Loesser was an American composer and lyricist. He died of lung cancer at age 59. During World War II, he wrote 1942's "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition". Formerly a successful lyricist in collaboration with other composers, this was the first song for which Loesser composed the melody in addition to the lyric. Loesser was awarded a Grammy Award in 1961 for Best Original Cast Show Album for "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying". - Harvey Schmidt
Harvey Schmidt (born September 12, 1929 in Dallas, Texas, USA) is an American writer of musical theatre, best known for composing the music for the longest running musical in history, "The Fantasticks", which ran off-Broadway from 1960 - 2002 for a total of 17,162 performances, all at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. A revival is currently planned for fall 2006. - George M. Cohan
George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878 - November 5, 1942) was a United States entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, director, and producer of Irish descent. Known as "the man who owned Broadway" in the decade before World War I, he is considered the father of American musical comedy. - Mitch Leigh
Mitch Leigh (born January 30, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American writer of musical theatre and theatrical producer best known for the show "Man Of La Mancha". Born Irwin Michnick and educated at Yale under Paul Hindemith, he began as a jazz musician and writing commercials for radio and television. In 1965 he teamed up with lyricist Joe Darion to write a musical based on "Don Quixote".
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