LYNN AHRENS
When we first met Lynn she worked in the copy department at McCaffrey & McCall. One day Tom and I noticed her carrying a guitar into the office and asked her to play something. She sang us a song she had written called, "You're Just a Phase. " It was a great concept with a wonderful melody. So we asked her if she'd like to write a Schoolhouse Rock song. The result: A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing. My favorites of the many songs Lynn wrote for us are Interjections, Telegraph Line, Three Ring Government and The Preamble. Scores of people have told me they never could have passed their high school Civics tests without humming Lynn's Preamble song.
οΎ In 1982, Lynn attended the BMI Musical Theater Workshop, where she met composer, Stephen Flarhety. That began what has become a 25 year collaboration. Their musical farce Lucky Stiff, first produced off Broadway by Playwrights Horizons, won the Richard Rodgers Award and Washington's 1990 Helen Hayes Award as Best Musical.
Lynn and Stephen were co-creators of the hit Broadway musical Once on this Island, which was awarded London's 1995 Olivier Award as Best Musical and received eight Tony nominations, including Best Score and Best Book. In 1998, they won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for their score of Ragtime; they received two Grammy nominations for Songs from Ragtime and Ragtime: Original Broadway Cast Recording.
Also in 1998, Lynn and Stephen received two Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations for the songs and score of Anastasia, Twentieth Century Fox's first feature animation.
In 2014 Lynn and Steven wrote the music for the Broadway version of "Rocky."
For more on Lynn (Yes, there's even more!), check out her website.
Lynn will stop singing if you click here:
Links to more of the people who've helped create Schoolhouse Rock