Composer’s World Goes ‘Round : Musicals: You can probably hum his tunes, but you don’t know his name. And that’s just how John Kander likes it.

Quick, who wrote the music for “New York, New York,” “Funny Lady,” “Cabaret” and the Broadway-bound “Kiss of the Spider Woman”?

Don’t know? Try this one: Who coined the phrase “Money makes the world go ‘round” and said of New York, ‘If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere”?

After nearly 30 years of being one-half of a very highly regarded musical team--with a goodly share of hits and flops--John Kander may not be a household name, but the songs he wrote with longtime partner Fred Ebb are. And that’s just how Kander likes it.

“We’re very unpublic people,” Kander, 65, said on the phone from his home in New York. “We’ve never had a press agent or any sort of representation. I think we’re both too shy of public experience. I’m very grateful for the success that we’ve had, and I’m just as grateful that I’m not a public persona so that I can live my life in my neighborhood very comfortably. I think it’s very important to go to the cleaners and go to the supermarket and keep your feet firmly on the ground.”

Of course, some of that lovely anonymity may end now that a revue featuring treasures by Kander and Ebb is making a 21-city tour.

The Nederlander Organization’s San Diego Playgoers series presents “The World Goes ‘Round: The Kander & Ebb Musical” through Sunday at the San Diego Civic Theatre.

Kander, for the record, loves the show, but, ever modest, hastens to add: “I can say the show is wonderful because we didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Instead, he credits the conceivers of the show, Scott Ellis, the director, Susan Stroman, the choreographer and librettist David Thompson.

“They took our material--not which songs we liked best. They took the material and formed it and shaped it into a theater piece that is not about us, but is about the people in it.”

The show debuted Off Broadway in 1991 with a five-person cast singing 31 songs. It not only features the songs “Cabaret” and “New York, New York,” but also less-known treasures such as the title song, “The World Goes ‘Round” from the 1977 film “New York, New York” and one of the team’s personal favorites, “Isn’t This Better?” from the film “Funny Lady.”

Also included are songs from the team’s musicals “Flora, the Red Menace,” in which Liza Minnelli made her Broadway debut, “Chicago,” “The Rink,” “The Act,” “The Happy Time,” “Woman of the Year” and “70, Girls, 70.”

Kander doesn’t have any formula for what makes a hit song. If he did, he says dryly, “All my songs would be hits and I’d be very rich.”

Still, if there is a line that connects the songs, it is that many spring from passionate characters hoping against the odds.

“If I looked at our work overall, the only thing that’s really consistent is that the characters have passion about something. It was always the characters themselves and their relationships with each other that intrigued us.

“If anything, in our last two shows, ‘The Rink’ and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,’ that element in our work has become more apparent.”

Kander grew up in Kansas City, Mo., where he fell in love with the piano at the age of 4. He went to New York as a graduate student in music at Columbia University.

After vacillating between a career in opera and musical theater, he cast his lot with musical theater, composing his first song with lyricist Ebb in 1963. That song, “My Coloring Book,” is in the revue.

Their first musical together was “Flora, the Red Menace” in 1965; that was followed by their super-hit, “Cabaret,” in 1966.

But there have been flops as well as successes since “Cabaret”: “The Happy Time,” “Zorba,” “70, Girls, 70” and “Woman of the Year.” But if the team has run hot and cold, they are definitely hot now.

“The Kiss of the Spider Woman” recently won the Evening Standard Award in London and is Broadway bound, although the theater and the dates are not yet set. “The World Goes ‘Round” is gathering enthusiastic reviews around the country. And Kander and Ebb are working on a new piece--a musical version of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth.”

But Kander makes it clear that being hot is not how the duo thinks of themselves. He describes himself and Ebb as two people who happen to write songs for a living.

They work according to the same routine that has served them all these years. Kander, who likes to go out, walks four blocks to Ebb’s home, because Ebb likes to stay in.

They do their work, they spend time with their friends--people such as Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Joseph Stein and their favorite leading ladies, Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera--and they take nothing for granted.

“Every time you sit down to write something new, it’s like you never did anything in your life before. We’re just starting to work on a new show again and we have the same feeling we had 30 years ago: ‘God, can we really do this?’ We still think of ourselves as young hopefuls hoping we’ll do it right.”

Performances of “The World Goes ‘Round” continue at 8 p.m. through Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Sunday with Saturday/Sunday matinees at 2 through Sunday. Tickets are $22.50-$37.50. At the San Diego Civic Theatre, 202 C St., San Diego, 236-6510 or 278-TIXS.