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. (Source: amazon.com)
Brian d’Arcy James features on:
Track 14: In Whatever Time We Have (from Children Of Eden)