Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz » (First Edition)

John Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and Fred Ebb was born in New York City. They have worked together creating musicals and songs since 1962. They, as well as coauthor Greg Lawrence, live in New York City.

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the longest-running song-writing partnership in Broadway history, having first joined forces in 1962. The creators of such groundbreaking musicals as Chicago, Cabaret, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, Kander and Ebb have helped to push American musical theater in a more daring direction, both musically and dramatically. Their impact on individual performers has been great as well, starting with the handpicked star of their first musical: an untested nineteen-year-old named Liza Minnelli (who writes of this experience in her introduction).

Colored Lights covers the major shows of Kander and Ebb's partnership, from Flora, the Red Menace (starring a then-unknown Liza) to The Visit, their newest show, which is set to star another Kander and Ebb favorite, Chita Rivera. The pages and musicals in between reveal what has made theirs such an important and long-lived musical partnership—and one so valued by the artists they have worked with. In recounting the genesis and controversies of Cabaret, reflecting on the superstar mentality of such artists as Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, and recalling their work with Bob Fosse on Chicago (as well as their thoughts on the Oscar-winning film version), John Kander and Fred Ebb provide a history not only of their own lives but also of the American musical theater of the late twentieth century.

Publishers Weekly

Anyone who enjoys musical theater will delight in this anecdotal memoir by an accomplished musical team who began their partnership in 1962. The text, a series of conversations told to Lawrence (Dance with Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins), reads like an extended gossip column written with style and wit. Composer Kander and lyricist Ebb collaborated on many Broadway shows including their first, Flora the Red Menace (1965), Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975). Their recollections bring the golden age of musical theater to life and reveal the nuts and bolts of creating a score for a successful musical. The two reminisce freely about stars such as Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand and Bob Fosse, with whom they had close working relationships. They lavishly praise Minnelli's talent and charm (often to the point of overkill) and are compassionate about her emotional ups and downs. Streisand, however, is damned with faint praise, and Ebb recounts abusive treatment from Bob Fosse, who had undergone a recent heart bypass operation, while they were working on Chicago. In another vignette, Kander and Ebb describe how they came to write the title song for the film New York, New York for Martin Scorsese. Although they were offended when Robert DeNiro criticized their first attempt, the new version was the one that became their greatest single hit. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.