Andrew Lloyd Webber

The most successful composer of the late 20th and early 21st century, Andrew Lloyd Webber has written 13 musicals, most of them running for many years in the London West End and New York Broadway. Several of his compositions - such as Don't Cry For Me Argentina (Evita), Music Of The Night (Phantom Of The Opera), Any Dream Will Do (Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) and Memory (Cats) - have become part of popular culture. His father was also a composer, his mother a violinist and pianist and Lloyd Webber started young, writing his first suite at the age of nine before studying at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, eventually leaving in 1965 to study at the Royal College of Music. He first collaborated with lyricist Tim Rice on the musical The Likes Of Us in 1965 and they wrote a series of pop songs together, but it was Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - a re-telling of the Biblical story of Joseph - which first made their name as a serious writing duo. They achieved international success with another Biblical story, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita, their show based on the life of Eva Peron. Lloyd Webber then went on to compose Variations (with his brother Julian) and Cats, based on the poetry of T.S.Eliot, which became Britain's longest-running musical with 21 continuous years on the West End stage. Other hits shows include Phantom Of The Opera, Starlight Express, Aspects Of Love, Sunset Boulevard and Whistle Down The Wind (which included the UK Number 1 hit No Matter What, recorded by Boyzone). Lloyd Webber has also produced several musicals, fronting various reality TV shows to find stars of new productions of The Sound Of Music, Joseph, Oliver and The Wizard Of Oz. In 2009 he launched a new musical, Love Never Dies.