Variations was choreographed by Anthony van Laast, and had an electric team of dancers including Wayne Sleep, Graham Fletcher, Sandy Strallen, Linda Mae Brewer and Jane Darling.
The album Variations was released in 1978. Based on Paganini’s Caprice in A minor, the recording featured Andrew Lloyd Webber’s cellist brother Julian and a number of the rock world’s leading musicians.
This work was then combined with Tell Me on a Sunday (an Andrew Lloyd Webber/Don Black song cycle) to produce Song and Dance. The show opened in London at the Palace Theatre and enjoyed a run of 781 performances, closing on 31st March 1984. The title song, “Tell Me on a Sunday”, was sung by Marti Webb originally and subsequently by, amongst others, Gemma Craven, Carol Nielsson, Lulu and Liz Robertson.
Song and Dance was subsequently presented in Australia, the USA, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and Holland. In a slightly rewritten form, the show ran on Broadway for over a year to a great public response. 1987 saw the worldwide release of a new orchestral version of Variations, together with an orchestral tone poem called Aurora, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s father.
