Andrew Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948, in South Kensington, England. He is the son of composer William Llo yd Webber and piano teacher, Jean Johnstone Lloyd Webber. Musical aptitude not only runs but apparently races in the family, and his younger brother, Julian, is an accomplished cellist. Andrew was a child prodigy and began playing the violin when he was three years of age. He attended Magdalen College, but did not graduate. He first gained success at the age of nineteen, when he and Tim Rice were commissioned to write “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” for Colet Court, a prep school, in 1968. By the time he left school, he had already written nine musicals. It was the start of other collaborations with Rice, notably, “Jesus Christ: Superstar (1970) and “Evita” (1976), both of which were released as albums before being brought first to the stage and then later to film.
Webber and Rice parted ways and Webber’s next success came in 1981 with the production of “Cats.” Always the innovator, this time Webber branched off onto a daring limb, collaborating with the existing lyrics of a deceased author (T.S. Elliot) rather than a living lyricist collaborator. “Cats” proved to be the longest running Broadway musical ever produced at the time, running for more than twenty years. His next smash hit came in 1986 with “The Phantom of the Opera” and in January of 2005, it overtook “Cats” as the longest running musical on Broadway. His other theatrical works include: “The Likes of Us”, “Aspects of Love”, “Sunset Boulevard”, The Beautiful Game” and “The Woman In White.” In 1995, “Sunset Boulevard” opened with the largest advance in Broadway history and won seven Tony Awards. Due to high weekly costs however, it also proved to be the biggest economical failure in history, losing 25 million dollars!
Andrew Lloyd Webber has been married three times and has five children. He is an avid art collector with a passion for Victorian art. His skill is extraordinary, and it is hoped he will thrill the public with his compositions for a long time to come.
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