Kander and Pierce

It is of interest when one half of a team takes on a new teammate. One composer who did it a few times was Richard Rodgers, starting with Lorenz Hart and moving on to Oscar Hammerstein and later Stephen Sondheim and even—in a most interesting collaboration—Richard Rodgers, writing both the words and the music. Now it's John Kander's turn, after the passing of his longtime partner Fred Ebb. ' “I hadn’t thought much about what projects were next after Fred died until one day, when I was working on ‘Scottsboro’ at home, and thought I’d like to do something really tiny — that you could almost do in your living room — after so many years of doing big Broadway shows,” Mr. Kander said in a telephone interview. Mr. Kander said he and Mr. Pierce [actor David Hyde Pierce's nephew] clicked when they began talking about an intimate musical project.' More...