Author

Charles Strouse

Charles Strouse

A long-standing member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in January 2002, an inductee into The Theater Hall of Fame, Charles Strouse's first Broadway musical, BYE BYE BIRDIE (1960), won him a Tony® Award and the London Critics Best Foreign Musical Award. In 1970, APPLAUSE, starring Lauren Bacall, achieved the same honors and his smash hit, ANNIE (1977), also won a Tony® for Best Score as well as two Grammy Awards®. Some of his other musicals include ALL AMERICAN, GOLDEN BOY (starring Sammy Davis Jr.), IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S SUPERMAN, I AND ALBERT, directed in London by John Schlesinger, and DANCE A LITTLE CLOSER, written with Alan Jay Lerner. CHARLIE & ALGERNON won a 1981 Tony® nomination for Best Score, as did RAGS in 1987 and NICK AND NORA in 1992. He wrote both the music and lyrics for off-Broadway's MAYOR, and teamed again with Martin Charnin to create ANNIE WARBUCKS, the sequel to ANNIE. His film scores include BONNIE & CLYDE, THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S, and ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN. Those Were The Days," the theme song for TV's ALL IN THE FAMILY is a Strouse song, with lyrics by his most frequent collaborator, Lee Adams. Born Too Late", a 1958 pop song written with Fred Tobias, was a top-10 BILLBOARD chart hit and is still heard on many oldies stations. The quadruple platinum album title song by Jay-Z, Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)", won the 1999 Grammy for the best Rap album, charted for more than a year and won the BILLBOARD 1998 R&B Album of the Year Award. Strouse's far-ranging talents include chamber and orchestral works, a piano concerto, a two-piano sonata, and operas. His latest choral work, The Child In Us All", premiered in Spring, 2000. NIGHTINGALE, an opera based on the Hans Christian Andersen story for which he wrote music, book and lyrics, was recorded by Sarah Brightman. Strouse was commissioned in 2001 to write CONCERTO AMERICA for the pianist Jeffrey Biegel. The work premiered in June 2002 with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall. Charles Strouse created the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop in New York, where he encouraged the talents of countless young composers, writers and performers. In 1999, Strouse received the ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers Award for Career Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre. In December, 1995, a tv reinterpretation of the classic BYE BYE BIRDIE (starring Jason Alexander and pop-star Vanessa Williams) aired on ABC-TV. The 1995/96 Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music and Lyrics was given to the new song written for and performed by Vanessa Williams: Let's Settle Down". Another tv interpretation in 1999, ANNIE, aired on ABC's Wonderful World of Disney, swept the ratings by winning over 40 million viewers, won the 1999 Peabody Award and 2 Emmy Awards. The show starred Kathy Bates, Audra McDonald, Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Victor Garber, Andrea McArdle and Alicia Morton as Annie and ranked #1 as movie of the year. A revised GOLDEN BOY was produced by the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven (November, 2000); and the ENCORES! Series presented the show in March, 2002. Future projects: GOLDEN BOY will be performed at the Greenwich Theatre in England in June, 2003. THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S, which Charles Strouse originally scored for film, has been turned into a full-length musical. The Broadway-bound version has a book by the late Michael Okrent and Evan Hunter, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. The Manhattan Theatre Club has scheduled the show for its 2003-04 season. An adaptation of the Paddy Chayevsky film MARTY, had a successful regional theatre run at Huntington Theatre in Boston in September, 2002. The show reunites Strouse with Lee Adams as lyricist; the book is by Rupert Holmes. John C Reilly starred in the Huntington production and will later again star when the show comes to Broadway next season.

Questions & Answers

There don't appear to be any questions submitted.