Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber, born in 1948, British composer of theatrical music, whose popular stage musicals include Jesus Christ Superstar (1971; in collaboration with British lyricist Timothy Rice), Cats (1981), and Phantom of the Opera (1986).

Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford and at the Royal College of Music. The son of the director of the London College of Music, Lloyd Webber began his musical training as a child. He published his first composition at the age of nine.

In 1967, while still students, Lloyd Webber and Rice wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a school performance. The musical was later professionally produced at an international arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York in 1972. A recording was released in 1972, but the show did not become a regular Broadway production until 1981.

Lloyd Webber and Rice next collaborated on Jesus Christ Superstar, which, issued as a record album, sold more than 3 million copies before the show opened on Broadway. The musical was nominated for five Tony Awards, and Lloyd Webber, as composer, won the Drama Desk Award (1973). Jesus Christ Superstar then became the longest-running musical in the history of British theater and was produced throughout the world. Another Lloyd Webber-Rice collaboration, Evita (1978), opened in New York in 1979, where it won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, seven Tony Awards, and a Grammy Award. Both shows were later made into successful motion pictures.

Lloyd Webber's Cats (1981) won seven Tony Awards and would become the longest-running show on Broadway with 7,485 performances. Phantom of the Opera (1986) would win seven more Tonys, and surpass Cats as the longest-running show in Broadway history in 2006. Lloyd Webber also wrote the music for Starlight Express (1984), Aspects of Love (1989), and Sunset Boulevard (1993), which won two Tony Awards. In 1990 he was the recipient of a Grammy Legends Award. Lloyd Webber was knighted in 1992. He was made a life peer in 1997 and took the name Lord Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton.