Colored Lights · Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz

**The autobiography, in dialogue, of the composer and lyricist of *Chicago* and *Cabaret *as well as a wise and witty memoir of forty years of American musicals.**

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the longest-running composer-lyricist team in Broadway history, having first joined forces in 1962. The creators of such groundbreaking musicals as *Chicago*, *Cabaret*, and *Kiss of the Spider Woman*, Kander and Ebb have helped to push American musical theater in a more daring direction, both musically and dramatically. Their impact on individual performers has been great as well, starting with the handpicked star of their first musical: an untested nineteen-year-old named Liza Minnelli (who writes of this experience in her introduction).

Colored Lights covers the major shows of Kander and Ebb's partnership, from *Flora, The Red Menace *(starring a then-unknown Liza) to *The Visit*, due to open on Broadway in 2004. The pages and musicals in between reveal what has made theirs such a long-lived musical partnership--and one so valued by the artists they have worked with. In recounting the genesis and controversies of *Cabaret*, reflecting on the superstar mentality of such artist as Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, and recalling their work with Bob Fosse on *Chicago *(as well as their views on the blockbuster 2002 film), John Kander and Fred Ebb provide a history not only of their own lives but also of the American musical theater of the late twentieth century.