Steven Schwartz on concept album
From An Evening with Stephen Schwartz: The Early Years · · Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning
“He had written what we would now call a concept album back in the 50s called Archie and ... which he was turning into a musical when they first met him.”
On , Steven Schwartz, Head of Investor Relations at AMERICAN NATIONAL GROUP INC, spoke about concept album during An Evening with Stephen Schwartz: The Early Years on Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning.
About Steven Schwartz
In a 2018 discussion titled "An Evening with Stephen Schwartz: The Early Years," Schwartz described his childhood introduction to musical theater. He said he grew up on Long Island and was interested in musical theatre from a young age. He recalled that his parents were friends with composer George Klein Singer, who had written a concept album in the 1950s that was being turned into a musical. Schwartz stated that he would listen to Singer play songs from the work and later try to pick them out on the piano. Schwartz also described his early creative process, noting that he would take scripts for musicals he had not seen from the library. He said he would put the scripts up at the piano while he was supposed to be practicing, look at the lyrics, and write his own tunes for them. He added that when he later heard the original music, he often felt he had done "much, much better."