Stephen J. Lawrence

Stephen J. Lawrence (September 5, 1939 – December 30, 2021) was an American composer, who lived and worked in New York City. He was also known as Stephen Lawrence, but used his middle initial to differentiate him from the singer Steve Lawrence.

Lawrence was born on September 5, 1939. He gained his B.A. in music from Hofstra University and during his lifetime composed more than 300 songs and scores for Sesame Street, resulting in three Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition.

Lawrence also composed the title song and four others for Marlo Thomas's Free to Be... You and Me, the landmark million-selling record, book and Emmy Award- and Peabody Award-winning ABC television special. He composed the million-selling Gold Record You Take My Breath Away, and scored the 1973 Robert De Niro movie Bang the Drum Slowly and the cult horror classic Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), which won the music award at the Paris International Festival of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Lawrence composed the score for One Summer Love (1976), a.k.a. Dragonfly, and composed the songs and score for the 1989 live-action movie musical Red Riding Hood starring Isabella Rossellini and Craig T. Nelson, lyrics by Michael Korie. He composed songs for the live-action movie musical The Emperor's New Clothes, starring Sid Caesar and Robert Morse; he also composed songs and score for The Tale of Peter Rabbit, an HBO animated musical starring Carol Burnett, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick.

Lawrence married Christine Jones in 1984, and their daughter Hannah was born two years later. After divorcing, he then married Cathy Schwartzman in 2002. He was the Music Director of Temple Sinai, Stamford, Connecticut, from that year until 2012. Lawrence died in Belleville, New Jersey, on December 30, 2021, at the age of 82.