Recording Broadway

THOMAS Z. SHEPARD

Born and raised in East Orange, New Jersey, Thomas Zachary Shepard showed musical gifts from an early age. He was only 11 when he began studying piano and composition at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, and he went on to attend the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and pursue graduate studies in composition at the Yale School of Music.

Fresh out of school, he was hired as an Artists & Repertory trainee at Columbia Records.  He rose to become co-director of CBS Masterworks, before leaving in 1974 to become division vice president of RCA Red Seal. In 1986 he moved to MCA as vice president and head of the label’s newly created division for Broadway and classical music.

He is best known, however, as a producer of classical-music recordings and, especially, of Broadway original-cast albums—notably on shows by the songwriter Stephen Sondheim. The notation “Produced by Thomas Z. Shepard” has appeared on hundreds of records, a legacy of quality and attention to detail which have earned him the respect of generations of audiophiles and music lovers. He also has recorded albums of popular music with such artists as Julie Andrews, Betty Buckley, Barbara Cook, Joel Grey, Leontyne Price and Barbra Streisand.

His 12 Grammy Awards include four for classical albums, six for Broadway albums, one children’s album and a Lifetime Achievement Award, presented in 1984. In 1986 he was awarded a special Drama Desk Award “for preserving musical-theater heritage on record.”

Shepard has never stopped composing, and has written the scores to five musicals and five operas, working with such librettists as Sheldon Harnick, Maurice Sendak and W.S. Gilbert—the last posthumously, of course, on a recreation of the “lost” Gilbert & Sullivan opera Thespis, which was presented by the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island in 2012. He also composed the score for Otto Preminger’s film Such Good Friends (1971), and earned two Emmy nominations for songs composed for the PBS show Between the Lions (2007).

Today Shepard, a longtime resident of Long Island, works as an independent producer, lecturer and consultant. He is currently touring the greater New York area with a lecture program, Recording Broadway: An Evening with Thomas Z. Shepard.