Colored Lights

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the longest-running composer-lyricist team 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). Throughout the text, the authors reveal what has made theirs such an important and long-lived musical partnership--and in so doing, Kander and Ebb provide a history not only of their own lives but also of the American musical theater of the late twentieth century.