Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) is a collection of whimsical light poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It serves as the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats.
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were successful outside of their parent musicals, such as "The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and "Memory" from Cats. In 2001 The New York Times referred to him as "the most commercially successful composer in history". The Daily Telegraph ranked him the "fifth most powerful person in British culture" in 2008, with lyricist Don Black writing "Andrew more or less single-handedly reinvented the musical."
Sir Timothy Miles Bindon Rice is an English lyricist and author. He is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote, among other shows, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita; with Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of ABBA, with whom he wrote Chess; and with Disney on Aladdin, The Lion King, the stage adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, and the original Broadway musical Aida. He also wrote lyrics for the Alan Menken musical King David, and for DreamWorks Animation's The Road to El Dorado.
William Southcombe Lloyd Webber was an English organist and composer, achieving some fame as a part of the modern classical music movement yet commercially facing mixed opportunities. Besides his long and prestigious career, composing works ranging from choral pieces to instrumental items and more, he is known for being the father of both fellow composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and virtuoso cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. He also notably served as a teacher, instructing pupils on music theory at the Royal College of Music for a time.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is a musical comedy with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The story is based on the "coat of many colours" story of Joseph from the Bible's Book of Genesis. This was the first Lloyd Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly; their first collaboration, The Likes of Us, written in 1965, was not performed until 2005.
Julian Lloyd Webber is a British solo cellist, the principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the founder of the In Harmony music education programme.
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. Its red-brick facade dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus behind a small plaza near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. The Palace Theatre seats 1,400.
Harold Smith Prince, commonly known as Hal Prince, was an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the 20th century.
An impresario is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays, or operas, performing a role in stage arts that is similar to that of a film or television producer.
Weiner is a surname or, in fact, the spelling of two different surnames originating in German and the closely related Yiddish language. In German, the name is pronounced [vaɪnɐ(ʁ)], of which the rare English pronunciation is a close approximation. In Yiddish, the name is pronounced almost as in southern German.
The Adelphi Theatre is a London West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals. The theatre was Grade II listed for historical preservation on 1 December 1987.
The Really Useful Group Ltd. (RUG) is an international company set up in 1977 by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is involved in theatre, film, television, video and concert productions, merchandising, magazine publishing, records and music publishing. The name is inspired by a phrase from the children's book series The Railway Series in which Thomas the Tank Engine and other locomotives are referred to as "Really Useful Engines".
Glenn Slater is an American lyricist who collaborates with Alan Menken and other musical theatre composers. He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Original Score for the Broadway version of The Little Mermaid at the 62nd Tony Awards in 2008, his second Tony nomination for Sister Act at the 65th Tony Awards in 2011, and his third Tony nomination for School of Rock at the 70th Tony Awards in 2016.
Madeleine Astrid Gurdon, Baroness Lloyd-Webber is an English former equestrian sportswoman, and the third and current wife of musical theatre impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber.
London College of Music (LCM) is a music school in London, England. It is one of eight separate Schools which make up the University of West London in the greater London Area.
The name Lloyd is a variation of the Welsh word llwyd or clwyd, which means "grey" or "brown". The double-l represents the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative of Welsh, and was sometimes also represented as fl, yielding the related name Floyd which can also be a variation of the family name Flood
The Songs That Got Away is an album by English soprano Sarah Brightman. The songs selected for this album were allegedly based on an idea by Brightman's then husband Andrew Lloyd Webber. His idea was to incorporate songs which were mostly from West End theatre or Broadway theatre productions that were either unsuccessful, never made it across to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, were cut from its respective show, or forgotten by time.
Stephen Ward is a musical with a book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The musical is based on the 1963 Profumo affair involving the War Minister John Profumo and the socialite Stephen Ward who introduced Profumo to his mistress Christine Keeler, who was also involved with a Russian spy. The musical's world premiere was in London's West End at the Aldwych Theatre in 2013.
The Missa Princeps Pacis is a mass composed by William Lloyd Webber in 1962 for a four-part choir and organ.
Nicholas Lloyd Webber is an English composer and music producer. He is known for scoring the BBC 1 drama Love, Lies and Records, co-writing the symphonic piece The Little Prince based on the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and also his 2017 musical, Fat Friends: The Musical which premiered at the Grand Theatre in Leeds and subsequently toured the UK in 2018. He has also written music for numerous television ad campaigns.
