It'd be easy to excuse anyone for thinking that Stephen Schwartz only writes religious musicals. After all, his most famous show is still Godspell, and his works surfacing most prominently in 1998 were the revival of Children of Eden and the DreamWorks film The Prince of Egypt. The Stephen Schwartz Album covers a wide range of work, however, including all of the above, earlier major works (Pippin, The Magic Show, and The Baker's Wife), and his Disney films with composer Alan Menken, Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (The Disney films and Rags are the only shows represented for which Schwartz wrote lyrics but not music.) This all-new 1999 recording features a number of talented artists from the Varèse Sarabande stable, including Christiane Noll, Susan Egan, Kristin Chenoweth, and Guy Haines. While many of these songs might be heard to better effect elsewhere, the album is a consistently good 65-minute package of gems, and especially noteworthy is the composer's own moving rendition of "Fathers and Sons." Schwartz also provides the song-by-song liner notes--a nice touch. --David Horiuchi

Oscar and Grammy-winning songwriter Stephen Schwartz, composer and lyricist f Godspell and Pippin, Lyricist of Disney's Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and composer and lyricist of DreamWork's Prince of Egypt, has recently released his first solo CD, Reluctant Pilgrim. Stephen, who is providing the music and lyrics for Disney's up-coming Geppetto, wrote and sung all 11 songs on Reluctant Pilgrim. In addition, he plays keyboards on the CD as well and is joined by a small group of New York's finest pop musicians and back-up vocalists.

For the many fans familiar with Stephen's Broadway and film work, this CD shows a new side of the songwriter and may surprise some. But if the tunes are more pop-oriented than expected, the lyrics still contain Stephen Schwartz's accustomed honesty, wit, and sharpness of observation. The songs rage from funny (as in "Crowded Island" a mordant reflection on looking for love in New York City) to hopeful (as in "So Far", the tale of a relationship which has survived bumps and bruises) to poignant (as in "Life Goes On", a memory of a friend who died of AIDS) to downright weird (as in "Prestidigitation", the strange tale of a down-and-out magician with one last great trick up his sleeve.) Other highlights are the parent's lament "The Hardest Part of Love", the ode to second chances, "Cactus Flowers", and the evocative "Dreamscape", which provides the CD with it's title line: "Time to sail, reluctant pilgrim/My fear is all I've got to lose/Life is nothing/Nothing but a dreamscape, and the dream is mine to choose." The songs are all passionate, thought-provoking, memorable and above all, entertaining.

CAPTAIN LOUIE is a family musical with music & lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell, Pippin). Adapted for the stage by Anthony Stein, from the book The Trip by Caldecott Award winner Ezra Jack Keats (who authored and illustrated 24 children’s classics, including the Caldecott Award winning The Snowy Day and the Caldecott Honor Book, Goggle), it's the story of a young boy on Halloween night who escapes into his own imagination as a means of coping with the loneliness he feels when he moves to a new neighborhood.

Souping up the classics with whatever contemporary music pulse is current at the moment has a long history. Some artists, like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, aspired to classical grandiosity. Others, like Michael Murphy and his discofied "A Fifth of Beethoven," turn classical melodies into pop hooks. Paul Schwartz falls somewhere in the middle with his Aria project, of which this is the third. Electronica grooves and effects angle their way through songs "based" on operatic works by Handel, Verdi, Puccini, and Monteverdi. Schwartz begins with a bar set high by some of these melodies, beautifully sung by soprano Rebecca Luker. Whether singing solo or in multi-tracked choirs, her voice opens heavens' gates, but she has to slog through some pedestrian arrangements to get there. Schwartz understands the difference between an orchestra and a synthesizer and with only a few exceptions--like the cheesy opening to "Ombra Ma Fu"--deploys each in appropriate measures. "Ascension," based on a Monteverdi aria is particularly striking with its underlying electronic ostinatos cycling through the breathtaking refrain. But too often, Schwartz's strings are saccharine and his rhythms clichéd in a music that uses high art only to reach for the facile. Like most classical-pop crossovers, time usually renders a verdict of kitsch in the first degree. --John Diliberto