Starlight

Starlight Express is a rock musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Richard Stilgoe (lyrics). Later productions have used additional songs with lyrics by Don Black, David Yazbek, Nick Coler and Lauren Aquilina, and with music by the composer's son, Alastair Lloyd Webber. The musical tells the story of a young but obsolete steam engine, Rusty, who races in a championship against modern engines in the hope of impressing a first-class carriage, Pearl. Famously, the actors perform the entire show on roller skates. On 12 June 1988, Starlight Express opened at a purpose-built theatre in Bochum, Germany.

Two members of the groundbreaking mid 1970s King Crimson line-up unite on a fascinating album length exploration of a melody - composed by David Cross and Robert Fripp - that emerged as one of the key themes on the King Crimson masterpiece, Starless…

The Starlight Express was adapted from a book by Algernon Blackwood, A Prisoner in Fairyland, for a theatre production in the West End during the First World War, with music by Sir Edward Elgar. Combining the usually contrasting elements of fairytale and melodrama, The Starlight Express depicts the fantasy world inhabited by a group of children, who possess a magical ‘starlight’ quality that has been lost by the adults around them. This is the most comprehensive recorded version of The Starlight Express to date, based on a new score prepared by the Elgar Edition, which has been adapted by the conductor Sir Andrew Davis.