The Music of ‘Wicked’: Stephen Schwartz and Arranger Stephen Oremus on What It Took to Make a Classic Broadway Song Score Even More Popular

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Stephen Schwartz will see you now. The worthier wizard of “Wicked” is the one who wrote one of Broadway’s all-time top song scores and now, a little over two decades later, has overseen the transition of that music into a film that is almost certainly on the fast track for Best Picture contention.

He is not the only veteran of the seminal Broadway team on board for the music, either, as the soundtrack finds him rejoined by the stage production’s original arranger and music supervisor, Stephen Oremus.

It’s a world-class Team of Stephens. Beyond having been the primary instigator behind turning “Wicked” into a stage musical (drawn from Gregory Maguire’s book), Schwartz is renowned for winning six Tonys and three Oscars as the composer and/or lyricist of the shows “Pippin” and “Godspell” and films like “Enchanted.” Oremus, meanwhile, is a Tony winner for his orchestrations on “The Book of Mormon” and “Kinky Boots,” and has also taken the lead on fleshing out the scores for Broadway shows like “Frozen” and “Avenue Q” and the film “Frozen 2.” (They collaborated closely with a non-Stephen, music producer Greg Wells; look for a separate interview with him coming in this space.) Schwartz is currently Oscar-shortlisted for collaborating with John Powell on the instrumental score for “Wicked.” But he’s already gone down in history for song-based achievements, which involve teaching the world exactly what a “war cry” sounds like when divas are enlisted.

Variety talked with him and Oremus about past and present creative decisions that went into the music, shortly after the film passed a $600 million global box office mark, making it the highest grossing Broadway musical film.