David Lee Shire is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtrack to the 1974 movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as Night on Disco Mountain, an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, are some of his best known works. His other work includes the score of the 1985 film, Return to Oz, the "sequel-in-part" of The Wizard of Oz . Shire is married to actress Didi Conn. Shire was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Esther Miriam and Buffalo society band leader and... piano teacher Irving Daniel Shire. He met his long-time theater collaborator lyricist/director Richard Maltby, Jr. at Yale University, where they wrote two musicals, Cyrano and Grand Tour, which were produced by the Yale Dramatic Association. Shire also co-fronted a jazz group at school, the Shire-Fogg Quintet, and was a Phi Beta Kappa honors student, with a double major in English and music. He was a member of the Pundits and Elihu and he graduated magna cum laude in 1959.
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