GREEN PANDA MUSIC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Collaborators on the Accompanist
- the Accompanist
Alan Menken is one of the most successful songwriters of the modern Musical Theatre era. He is an eight-time Oscar Winner, eleven time Grammy winner, and has composed some of the most notable songs and scores of the last thirty years.
Howard Ashman and Alan Menken were approached in 1987 by then head of Walt Disney Pictures, Jeffrey Katzenberg, to work on a new feature film for Disney. Their collaboration on The Little Mermaid marked a renaissance in the popularity of Walt Disney's animation work, which had been deteriorating since the successes of Jungle Book and Mary Poppins in the 1960s. Suddenly Menken and Ashman's songs had invigorated people to the Disney name again. With it's lilting "Part of Your World" and the Oscar Winning Calypso "Under The Sea" The Little Mermaid marked the renaissance of the Disney name and over the subsequent years Menken has been a powerful force with his melodies and scores. On Oscar Night in 1990, when they received the first of their Oscars Ashman took Menken to one side to explain that he was ill and dying. They were already working on Beauty and the Beast at that time and continued to produce another Oscar winning score and song. The next project Aladdin sadly saw the passing of Howard Ashman in 1991, and therefore lyricist Tim Rice was brought in to complete the project, creating the lyrics for the next Oscar winner "A Whole New World". Since the passing of Ashman Menken has worked with several collabortors. The 1992 movie of Newsies was lyricised by Jack Feldman, whilst Tim Rice again provided the lyrics for the additional songs created for the Broadway opening of Beauty and the Beast in 1994. During the middle years of the 1990s Menken worked with Stephen Schwartz in creating the songs for both The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Pocahontas, the latter of which again provided Alan with two Oscar wins, one for best score and the other for the song "Colors of the Wind". He teamed up with David Zippell to create the Gospel based score for the movie Hercules whilst also creating King David with Tim Rice which was the inaugural performance at the refurbished New Amsterdam Theatre in New York, after plans of it being premiered in Israel were cancelled. Since then he has created the scores and songs for Home on the Range and Tangled with collaborator Glenn Slater, whilst Enchanted was created again with Stephen Schwartz. With the success of the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast in 1994 Alan has also focussed on turning the movie works into stage shows, with runs of Der Glockner von Notre Dame which was a German production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1999, as well as collaborating to produce new songs for the staging of The Little Mermaid in 2008, Newsies in 2012 and most recently with the opening of the stage version of Aladdin in 2014.
Randy Newman is an American songwriter and composer who has written some of the most notable film songs of the past thirty years as well as being an iconic songwriter since the early 1960s.
Randall Stuart 'Randy' Newman was born on 28th November 1943 in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Adele 'Dixie' Fox was a secretary whilst his father, Irving George Newman, worked as an internist. His three uncles, on the other hand, were heavily involved in creating music for films. Alfred Newman, one of Randy's three uncles, still has the greatest number of Oscars for music contributions, he won a total of 9. Only Walt Disney (22 Oscars) and Cedric Gibbons (11 Oscars - who was the Art Director for amongst other movies 'The Wizard of Oz') have won more. Randy always envisaged himself following the family tradition and working within films. Newman studied for a BA to the University of California but didn't complete the course, dropping out with only one semester to go. At the age of 17 he became a professional songwriter, his childhood friend Lenny Waronker was involved in the music industry and brought Newman in to work with various artists. Newman's early songs were recorded by the likes of Gene Pitney and Dusty Sprinfield amongst a long list. One of his early successes as a songwriter was 'Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear' which reached number 4 in the UK charts in 1967 when recorded by The Alan Price Set. In 1968 he recorded a debut solo album which, although finding critical success, didn't make it into the Billboard 200. In 1970 Harry Nilsson recorded an album of purely Newman songs for his release 'Nilsson sings Newman'. Again this wasn't a commercial success although critics were very complimentary of the album. When Newman released his next album, '12 Songs' in 1970 it included a song that would later go on to be a massive hit for Three Dog Night and even later for Tom Jones and the Stereophonics 'Mama Told me not to come'.
1972 saw the release of Newman's album 'Sail Away'. This included the title track which was later recorded by both Ray Charles and also Linda Rondstadt, as well as featuring the song 'You Can Leave Your Hat On' which has been covered by Three Dog Night, Etta James, Joe Cocker and most recently Tom Jones for the movie 'The Full Monty'.
In 1977 Newman released 'Little Criminals' which feautred the suprising and also controversial hit 'Short People'. In 1983 his 'Trouble in Paradise' album included the song 'I Love L.A.' which has been widely used since its creation. Newman's albums have always been noted for their distinctive voice and critical and often satirical lyric writing.
In 1995 Randy Newman created his musical version of 'Faust' based on the Goethe novel. 'Feels like Home' which later was recorded by Linda Rondstadt and also Chantal Kreviazuk is taken from this work.
Randy Newman has written for films since 1971 when he worked on the movie Cold Turkey. Since then he has been involved in the musical creation for many movies including Parenthood, Meet The Parents, and also the Robin Williams/Robert de Niro movie Awakenings but he is most known recently for his work with director John Lasseter and Disney/Pixar on the Toy Story series of movies including the songs 'You've Got A Friend in Me' for Toy Story and 'When She Loved Me' for Toy Story 2 as well as creating songs and music for A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc, Cars and The Princess and the Frog. Randy Newman finally won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 2001 (after 15 prior nominations) for the song 'If I Didn't Have You' from the movie Monsters Inc. He won his second Oscar in 2011 for Best Original Song, this time for 'We Belong Together' from the movie Toy Story 3. Along with his Oscar wins, he has 6 Grammys and 4 Emmys.
Selected list of songs & movies for which Randy Newman has created music and songs;
Tim Rice is a lyricist who, over the past 50 years, has created some of the most well known shows in his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber and more latterly in his work with Alan Menken and Elton John respectively for Disney.
Job Titles:
- Collaborators on the Accompanist
- the Accompanist
Stephen Lawrence Schwartz is an American composer and lyricist who was born of the 6th March 1948 in New York City. Graduating from High School in 1964 he went on to the Juilliard School to study piano and composition, and graduated in 1968 from Carnegie Mellon University after studying drama.
Stephen Sondheim is arguably the leading musical theatre composer and lyricist of his era. Over the past fifty years and more his musicals have been classed as masterpieces and he has created some of the most notable scores and songs in musical theatre history.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born on 22nd March 1930 in New York City. His mother, Janet Fox, was fashhion designer whilst his father, Herbert Sondheim, was a successful dress manufacturer. At the age of 10 his father abandoned the family home to move in with another woman, leaving Stephen with his abusive mother. He was an isolated child but when his mother moved them to Pennsylvania Sondheim became friends with James Hammerstein, son of the lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, whose collaboration with Richard Rogers is one of the most notable in musical theatre history. Sondheim was heavily influenced by Oscar Hammerstein and spent his teenage years studying under the mentorship of Hammerstein. Whilst attending George School Stephen created a comic-musical based on things happening within the school. He took it to Hammerstein (without naming the writer). Hammerstein told him it was the worst thing he had ever seen, but followed it up by explaining why this was the case. Sondheim states that he learned more in this afternoon about songwriting and musical theatre than most people learn in a lifetime. During his mentorship under Hammerstein Stephen was challenged by Hammerstein to write four musicals, each with preconditions : 1. Based on a play he admired, 2. Based on a play he liked but thought was flawed, 3. Based on an existing novel or short story but not previously dramatised and 4. An original. For the third of these challenges Sondheim created Bad Tuesday which was based on 'Mary Poppins'. This preceeded the unrelated Disney film (music by the Sheerman Brothers). None of Sondheim's four projects has ever seen a professional production. Over the next few years Stephen attended Williams College and composed and learned his trade, he wrote for Television on the series Topper. In 1952 Sondheim created three songs for the play Sataurday Night which was due to open on Broadway in the 1954-55 season. It did not happen because of the unfortunate passing of Lemuel Ayers, the man pushing the work.
Tim J Spencer is a musician and songwriter from the United Kingdom. Over the past 20 years he has created music and orchestrations for television and theatre as well as having numerous songs performed around the world and on various recordings.
As a creator of musicals he has written Berlin, Rising Sun and, most recently, The Tombstones as well as working as an orchestrator, pianist and musical director on shows all over the UK, including the West End, and further afield. Berlin was showcased at The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 2007.
In Television Tim worked with the BBC as a musical director and has arranged for a variety of TV shows including This Morning.
As a songwriter his song "Do You Like It Like That", with artist Tracey Shield, reached Number 1 in the Nashville Independent Country Charts.
Since the start of 2013 Tim has been devoting his time to creating the series of digital albums known as The Accompanist.