Word: lyricist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Among those he has picked, Jerry Herman, the composer-lyricist has the best credentials for success (Hello, Dolly and Mame). Still, this time he is out of his element. Chaillot, even as embodied in this musical, is not the completely frivolous comedy Herman has worked with in the past. Although essentially telling us the story of a comic woman who refuses to accept the fact that the modern world is a different place than it was in 1903, Giraudoux has more than frivolity in mind. Below the surface of his comedy is the serious warning that the snowballing forces...
Regrettably Zorba's music does not always reach the level of Prince's craftsmanship. John Kander and Fred Ebb, the composer and lyricist respectively, have still failed to produce the great score that their Flora the Red Menace and Cabaret hinted was on the way. While many of the numbers have uncommonly fine melodies and all are at least a notch above average musically, sometimes they add little to dramatic values clearly evident in the book and staging. Neither of Zorba's solos tell us much we don't already know about the character at the time of the songs...
Musically, Gypsy is a knockout. Jule Styne never before or after wrote a score to compare with it; one suspects lyricist Stephen Sondheim of having contributed measurably to the choice and execution of Gypsy's tunes. And Bob Hoffmann's orchestra does them proud...
Cole Porter, the lyricist composer, was a Yale man. Ron Porter, the dancer-director, is a Harvard man. Put them together and Yale wins 24-20, but it's a hell of a game. Sometimes not what you'd expect, sometimes not what you'd want, but a hell of a game...
Thus it was that the group's chief lyricist, John Lennon, began tuning in on U.S. Folk Singer Bob Dylan (The Times They Are A-Changin'); it wasn't Dylan's sullen anger about life that Lennon found appealing so much as the striving to "tell it like it is." Gradually, the Beatles' work began to tell it too. Their 1965 song, Nowhere Man ("Doesn't have a point of view, knows not where he's going to") asked: "Isn't he a bit like you and me?" Last year...