Stephen Schwartz brings his musical ingenuity from Broadway to Hollywood in Walt Disney's 33rd full-length animated feature, Pocahontas. In a first-time collaboration with Academy Award®-and Grammy® Award winner Alan Menken, Iyricist Schwartz helped to create eight new songs and the score for the film.Stephen, best known for writing the music and lyrics for Godspell, won several awards in 1971, including two Grammy® Awards. In addition, he penned the music and Iyrics to award-winning Pippin. His latest theater work was the score for Children of Eden.Early in his career, Stephen worked as a producer for RCA Records in New York, but shortly thereafter began to work in the Broadway theater. His first major credit was the title song for the play Butterflies Are Free, which was used in the film version, as well. This was followed by the English texts, in collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, for the Bernstein Mass, which opened the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.The following year, he wrote the music and lyrics for The Baker 's Wife, which closed before reaching Broadway after a disastrous out-of-town tryout tour. However, the cast album went on to attain cult status, leading to several subsequent productions, and culminating in a London revival directed by Trevor Nunn in 1988.Adapting, directing, and contributing four songs to the score of the Broadway musical version of Studs Terkel's Working, Stephen won the Drama Desk Award as Best Director. After that project, he completed a one-act musical for children, The Trip. In 1986, he provided Iyrics for Charles Strouse's music for Rags, and has also contributed music to the Off-Broadway revues Personals and A...My Name Is Still Alice.Born in New York in 1948, Stephen studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School of Music while still in high school. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1968 with a B.F.A. in Drama.Stephen continues his relationship with Disney and Alan Menken by working on the score for the upcoming Disney animated feature, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and he is also writing music and Iyrics for another upcoming animated feature film tentatively called Fa Mulan.
