Later Career
In 1991, Schwartz wrote the music and lyrics for the musical Children of Eden. He then began working in film, collaborating with composer Alan Menken on the scores for the Disney animated features Pocahontas (1995), for which he received two Academy Awards, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Pippi Longstocking (1997). He also provided songs for DreamWorks' first animated feature, The Prince of Egypt (1998), winning another Academy Award for the song When You Believe. He wrote music and lyrics for the original television musical, Geppetto (2000), seen on The Wonderful World of Disney. A stage adaptation of this piece premiered in June 2006 at The Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, and was entitled Geppetto and Son., and is now known as Disney's My Son Pinocchio: Geppetto's Musical Tale. A version created for young performers, entitled Geppetto & Son, Jr. had its world premiere on July 17, 2009 at the Lyric Theatre in Stuart, Florida. It was presented by the StarStruck Performing Arts Center.
In 2003, Schwartz returned to Broadway, as composer and lyricist for Wicked, a musical based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which tells the story of the Oz characters from the point of view of the witches. Schwartz won a Grammy Award for his work as composer and lyricist and producer of Wicked's cast recording. On March 23, 2006, the Broadway production of Wicked passed the 1,000 performance mark, making Schwartz one of four composers (the other three being Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jerry Herman, and Richard Rodgers) to have three shows last that long on Broadway (the other two were Pippin and The Magic Show). In 2007, Schwartz joined Jerry Herman as being one of only two composer/lyricists to have three shows run longer than 1,500 performances on Broadway.
After Wicked, Schwartz was tapped to contribute music and lyrics for a new musical that was commissioned to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen. The production entitled Mit Eventyr or "My Fairytale" opened at the Gladsaxe Theatre in Copenhagen in the fall of 2005. The American premiere of My Fairytale took place in the summer of 2011 at the PCPA Theatrefest of California and was directed by the composer's son Scott Schwartz.
Schwartz returned to Hollywood in 2007 and wrote lyrics for the hit Disney film Enchanted, again collaborating with Menken. Three songs from the film, "Happy Working Song," "That's How You Know," and "So Close," were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. He has also written the theme song for the Playhouse Disney show Johnny and the Sprites, starring John Tartaglia. A recent project is incidental music for his son Scott Schwartz's adaptation of Willa Cather's My Ántonia.
In 2008, Applause Theatre and Cinema Books published the first ever Schwartz biography entitled Defying Gravity, by Carol de Giere. The book is a comprehensive look at his career and life, and also includes sections on how to write for the musical theatre.
Turning to the pop world in 2009, Schwartz collaborated with John Ondrasik in writing two songs on the Five for Fighting album Slice, the title track as well as "Above the Timberline." Ondrasik became familiar with Schwartz based on his daughter's affection for, and repeated attendance at performances of, the musical Wicked.
In September 2011, the Northlight Theatre in Chicago premiered Schwartz's new musical, Snapshots which featured music and lyrics by Schwartz, book by David Stern, and was directed by Ken Sawyer. It blended together "some of the best-loved music with some of the genuinely wonderful lesser known gems of (the) renowned Broadway composer".
On March 22, 2012, the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus released "Testimony", composed by Schwartz with lyrics taken from submissions to Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project.
Read more about this topic: Stephen Schwartz (composer)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)