GustavM · CC BY-SA 3.0

Composed the music for Bye Bye Birdie (1960), Broadway's affectionate satire of rock-and-roll fandom, and later for Annie (1977), whose "Tomorrow" became one of the most performed songs in musical theater. Across a career spanning more than six decades until his death in 2025, he also wrote the score for Applause, extending a body of work that shaped mainstream American musical theater from the 1960s onward.