Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim | |
---|---|
Sondheim, c. 1976 | |
Born | New York City, U.S. | March 22, 1930
Died | November 26, 2021 Roxbury, Connecticut, U.S. | (aged 91)
Education | Williams College (BA) |
Occupation | Composer |
Years active | 1952–2021 |
Spouse |
Jeffrey Romley (m. 2017) |
Awards | See Full list |
Musical career | |
Genres | Musical theater |
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (/ˈsɒndhaɪm/; March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical.[1] With his frequent collaborators Harold Prince and James Lapine, Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes that ranged beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience.[2][3] His music and lyrics are tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of life.[4][5]
Sondheim's interest in musical theater began at a young age, and he was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II. He began his career by writing the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959). He transitioned to writing both music and lyrics for the theater, with his best-known works including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Into the Woods (1987), and Passion (1994).
Sondheim's numerous awards and nominations include eight Tony Awards, an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, an Olivier Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He also was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 1993 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.[6] A theater is named after him both on Broadway and in the West End of London. Film adaptations of his works include West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Into the Woods (2014), and West Side Story (2021).
Early life and education
[edit]Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, into a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Etta Janet ("Foxy"; née Fox; 1897–1992) and Herbert Sondheim (1895–1966). His paternal grandparents, Isaac and Rosa, were German Jews, and his maternal grandparents, Joseph and Bessie, were Lithuanian Jews from Vilnius.[7] His father manufactured dresses designed by his mother. The composer grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and, after his parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The only child of affluent parents living in the San Remo at 145 Central Park West, he was described in Meryle Secrest's biography Stephen Sondheim: A Life as an isolated, emotionally neglected child. When he lived in New York City, Sondheim attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. He spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin.[7] His mother sent him to New York Military Academy in 1940.[8] From 1942 to 1947, he attended George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he wrote his first musical, By George, in 1946.[8][9] From 1946 to 1950, Sondheim attended Williams College. He graduated magna cum laude and received the Hubbard Hutchinson Prize, a two-year fellowship to study music.[8]
Sondheim traced his interest in theater to Very Warm for May, a Broadway musical he saw when he was nine. "The curtain went up and revealed a piano", Sondheim recalled. "A butler took a duster and brushed it up, tinkling the keys. I thought that was thrilling."[10]
Sondheim detested his mother,[11] who was said to be psychologically abusive[12] and to have projected her anger from her failed marriage onto her son:[13] "When my father left her, she substituted me for him. And she used me the way she used him, to come on to and to berate, beat up on, you see. What she did for five years was treat me like dirt, but come on to me at the same time."[14] She once wrote him a letter saying that the only regret she ever had was giving birth to him.[15] When she died in 1992, Sondheim did not attend her funeral. He had been estranged from her for nearly 20 years.[11][16]
Mentorship by Oscar Hammerstein II
[edit]![Studio photo of a smiling Oscar Hammerstein](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Oscar_Hammerstein_-_portrait.jpg/170px-Oscar_Hammerstein_-_portrait.jpg)
When Sondheim was about ten years old (around the time of his parents' divorce), he formed a close friendship with James Hammerstein, son of lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II, who were neighbors in Bucks County. The elder Hammerstein became Sondheim's surrogate father, influencing him profoundly and developing his love of musical theater. Sondheim met Hal Prince, who later directed many of his shows, at the opening of South Pacific, Hammerstein's musical with Richard Rodgers. The comic musical Sondheim wrote at George School, By George, was a success among his peers and buoyed his self-esteem. When he asked Hammerstein to evaluate it as though he had no knowledge of its author, he said it was the worst thing he had ever seen: "But if you want to know why it's terrible, I'll tell you." They spent the rest of the day going over the musical, and Sondheim later said, "In that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime."[17]
Hammerstein designed a course of sorts for Sondheim on constructing a musical. He had the young composer write four musicals, each with one of the following conditions:[18]
- Based on a play he admired; Sondheim chose George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly's Beggar on Horseback (which became All That Glitters)
- Based on a play he liked but thought flawed; Sondheim chose Maxwell Anderson's High Tor
- Based on an existing novel or short story not previously dramatized, which became his unfinished version of Mary Poppins (Bad Tuesday,[19] unrelated to the musical film and stage play scored by the Sherman Brothers)
- An original, which became Climb High
None of the "assignment" musicals were produced professionally. High Tor and Mary Poppins have never been produced: the rights holder for the original High Tor refused permission (though a musical version by Arthur Schwartz was produced for television in 1956), and Mary Poppins was unfinished.[20]
Hammerstein's death
Hammerstein died of stomach cancer on August 23, 1960, aged 65.[21][22] Sondheim later recalled that Hammerstein had given him a portrait of himself. Sondheim asked him to inscribe it, and said later of the request that it was "weird...it's like asking your father to inscribe something." Reading the inscription ("For Stevie, My Friend and Teacher") choked up the composer, who said, "That describes Oscar better than anything I could say."[23]
Education
[edit]Sondheim began attending Williams College, a liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, whose theater program attracted him.[24] His first teacher there was Robert Barrow:
everybody hated him because he was very dry, and I thought he was wonderful because he was very dry. And Barrow made me realize that all my romantic views of art were nonsense. I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear "dah-dah-dah-DUM." It never occurred to me that art was something worked out. And suddenly it was skies opening up. As soon as you find out what a leading tone is, you think, Oh my God. What a diatonic scale is—Oh my God! The logic of it. And, of course, what that meant to me was: Well, I can do that. Because you just don't know. You think it's a talent, you think you're born with this thing. What I've found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It's just that some people get it developed and some don't.[25]
The composer told Meryle Secrest: "I just wanted to study composition, theory, and harmony without the attendant musicology that comes in graduate school. But I knew I wanted to write for the theater, so I wanted someone who did not disdain theater music."[26] Barrow suggested that Sondheim study with Milton Babbitt, whom Sondheim called "a frustrated show composer" with whom he formed "a perfect combination".[26] When they met, Babbitt was working on a musical for Mary Martin based on the myth of Helen of Troy. The two met once a week in New York City for four hours. (At the time, Babbitt was teaching at Princeton University.) According to Sondheim, they spent the first hour dissecting Rodgers and Hart or George Gershwin or studying Babbitt's favorites (Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson). They then proceeded to other forms of music (such as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony), critiquing them the same way.[27] Fascinated by mathematics, Babbitt and Sondheim studied songs by a variety of composers (especially Jerome Kern). Sondheim told Secrest that Kern had the ability "to develop a single motif through tiny variations into a long and never boring line and his maximum development of the minimum of material". He said of Babbitt, "I am his maverick, his one student who went into the popular arts with all his serious artillery".[26] At Williams, Sondheim wrote a musical adaption of Beggar on Horseback (a 1924 play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, with Kaufman's permission) that had three performances.[28] A member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity,[29] he graduated magna cum laude in 1950.[30]
"A few painful years of struggle" followed, when Sondheim auditioned songs, lived in his father's dining room to save money, and spent time in Hollywood writing for the television series Topper.[10] He devoured 1940s and 1950s films, and called cinema his "basic language";[11] his film knowledge got him through The $64,000 Question contestant tryouts. Sondheim disliked movie musicals, favoring classic dramas such as Citizen Kane, The Grapes of Wrath, and A Matter of Life and Death: "Studio directors like Michael Curtiz and Raoul Walsh ... were heroes of mine. They went from movie to movie to movie, and every third movie was good and every fifth movie was great. There wasn't any cultural pressure to make art".[31]
At age 22, Sondheim had finished the four shows Hammerstein requested. Screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein's Front Porch in Flatbush, unproduced at the time, was being shopped around by designer and producer Lemuel Ayers. Ayers approached Frank Loesser and another composer; both turned him down. Ayers and Sondheim met as ushers at a wedding, and Ayers commissioned Sondheim for three songs for the show; Julius Epstein flew in from California and hired Sondheim, who worked with him in California for four or five months. After eight auditions for backers, half the money needed was raised. The show, retitled Saturday Night, was intended to open during the 1954–55 Broadway season, but Ayers died of leukemia in his early forties. The production rights transferred to his widow, Shirley, and due to her inexperience the show did not continue as planned;[4] it opened off-Broadway in 2000. Sondheim later said, "I don't have any emotional reaction to Saturday Night at all—except fondness. It's not bad stuff for a 23-year-old. There are some things that embarrass me so much in the lyrics—the missed accents, the obvious jokes. But I decided, leave it. It's my baby pictures. You don't touch up a baby picture—you're a baby!"[11]
Career
[edit]1954–1959: Early Broadway success
[edit]West Side Story
[edit]Burt Shevelove invited Sondheim to a party where Sondheim arrived before him but knew no one else well. He saw a familiar face, Arthur Laurents, who had seen one of the auditions of Saturday Night, and they began talking. Laurents told him he was working on a musical version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonard Bernstein, but they needed a lyricist; Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who were supposed to write the lyrics, were under contract in Hollywood. He said that although he was not a big fan of Sondheim's music, he enjoyed the lyrics from Saturday Night and he could audition for Bernstein. The next day, Sondheim met and played for Bernstein, who said he would let him know. Sondheim wanted to write music and lyrics; he consulted with Hammerstein, who said, as Sondheim related in a 2008 New York Times video interview, "Look, you have a chance to work with very gifted professionals on a show that sounds interesting, and you could always write your own music eventually. My advice would be to take the job."[4] West Side Story, directed by Jerome Robbins, opened in 1957 and ran for 732 performances. Sondheim expressed dissatisfaction with his lyrics, saying they did not always fit the characters and were sometimes too consciously poetic. Initially Bernstein was also credited as a co-writer of the lyrics, but he later offered Sondheim solo credit, as Sondheim had essentially done all of them. The New York Times review of the show did not mention the lyrics.[32] Sondheim described the division of the royalties, saying that Bernstein received 3% and he received 1%. Bernstein suggested evening the percentage at 2% each, but Sondheim refused because he was satisfied with just getting the credit. Sondheim later said he wished "someone stuffed a handkerchief in my mouth because it would have been nice to get that extra percentage".[4]
After West Side Story opened, Shevelove lamented the lack of "lowbrow comedy" on Broadway and mentioned a possible musical based on Plautus's Roman comedies. Sondheim was interested in the idea and called a friend, Larry Gelbart, to co-write the script. The show went through a number of drafts, and was interrupted briefly by Sondheim's next project.[33]
Gypsy
[edit]In 1959, Laurents and Robbins approached Sondheim for a musical version of Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir after Irving Berlin and Cole Porter turned it down. Sondheim agreed, but Ethel Merman – cast as Mama Rose – had just finished Happy Hunting with an unknown composer (Harold Karr) and lyricist (Matt Dubey). Although Sondheim wanted to write the music and lyrics, Merman refused to let another first-time composer write for her and demanded that Jule Styne write the music.[34] Sondheim, concerned that writing lyrics again would pigeonhole him as a lyricist, called his mentor for advice. Hammerstein told him he should take the job, because writing a vehicle for a star would be a good learning experience. Sondheim agreed; Gypsy opened on May 21, 1959, and ran for 702 performances.[4]
1962–1966: Music and lyrics
[edit]A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
[edit]The first Broadway production for which Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which opened in 1962 and ran for 964 performances.[35] The book, based on farces by Plautus, was by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. The show won six Tony Awards (including Best Musical)[36] and had the longest Broadway run of any show for which Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics.[37]
Anyone Can Whistle
[edit]Sondheim had participated in three straight hits, but his next show—1964's Anyone Can Whistle—was a nine-performance bomb (although it introduced Angela Lansbury to musical theater).
Do I Hear a Waltz?
[edit]Do I Hear a Waltz?, based on Laurents's 1952 play The Time of the Cuckoo, was intended as another Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with Mary Martin in the lead. A new lyricist was needed,[38] and Laurents and Rodgers's daughter, Mary, asked Sondheim to fill in. Although Richard Rodgers and Sondheim agreed that the original play did not lend itself to musicalization, they began writing a musical version.[39] The project had many difficulties, including Rodgers's alcoholism. Sondheim later called it the one project he truly regretted writing, given that the reasons he wrote it—as a favor to Mary, as a favor to Hammerstein, as an opportunity to work again with Laurents, and as an opportunity to make money—were not reasons to write a musical. He then decided to work only when he could write both music and lyrics.[11]
Sondheim asked author and playwright James Goldman to join him as bookwriter for a new musical inspired by a gathering of former Ziegfeld Follies showgirls: initially titled The Girls Upstairs, it became Follies.[40]
Evening Primrose and other work
[edit]In 1966, Sondheim semi-anonymously provided lyrics for "The Boy From...", a parody of "The Girl from Ipanema" in the off-Broadway revue The Mad Show. The song was credited to "Esteban Río Nido",[41] Spanish for "Stephen River Nest", and in the show's playbill the lyrics were credited to "Nom De Plume". That year Goldman and Sondheim hit a creative wall on The Girls Upstairs, and Goldman asked Sondheim about writing a TV musical. The result was Evening Primrose, with Anthony Perkins and Charmian Carr. Written for the anthology series ABC Stage 67 and produced by Hubbell Robinson, it was broadcast on November 16, 1966. According to Sondheim and director Paul Bogart, the musical was written only because Goldman needed money for rent. The network disliked the title and Sondheim's alternative, A Little Night Music.[42]
After Sondheim finished Evening Primrose, Jerome Robbins asked him to adapt Bertolt Brecht's The Measures Taken despite the composer's general dislike of Brecht's work. Robbins wanted to adapt another Brecht play, The Exception and the Rule, and asked John Guare to adapt the book. Leonard Bernstein had not written for the stage in some time, and his contract as conductor of the New York Philharmonic was ending. Sondheim was invited to Robbins's house in the hope that Guare would convince him to write the lyrics for a musical version of The Exception and the Rule; according to Robbins, Bernstein would not work without Sondheim. When Sondheim agreed, Guare asked: "Why haven't you all worked together since West Side Story?" Sondheim answered, "You'll see". Guare said that working with Sondheim was like being with an old college roommate, and he depended on him to "decode and decipher their crazy way of working"; Bernstein worked only after midnight, and Robbins only in the early morning. Bernstein's score, which was supposed to be light, was influenced by his need to make a musical statement.[43] Stuart Ostrow, who worked with Sondheim on The Girls Upstairs, agreed to produce the musical, initially titled A Pray by Blecht, then The Race to Urga. An opening night was scheduled, but during auditions Robbins asked to be excused for a moment. When he did not return, a doorman said he had gotten into a limousine to go to John F. Kennedy International Airport. Bernstein burst into tears and said, "It's over". Sondheim later said of this experience: "I was ashamed of the whole project. It was arch and didactic in the worst way."[44] He wrote one and a half songs and threw them away, the only time he ever did that. Eighteen years later, Sondheim refused Bernstein's and Robbins's request to retry the show.[43]
Sondheim lived in a Turtle Bay, Manhattan brownstone from his writing of Gypsy in 1959. Ten years later, he heard a knock on the door. His neighbor, Katharine Hepburn, was in "bare feet—this angry, red-faced lady" and told him, "You have been keeping me awake all night!" (she was practicing for her musical debut in Coco). "I remember asking Hepburn why she didn't just call me, but she claimed not to have my phone number. My guess is that she wanted to stand there in her bare feet, suffering for her art".[45]
1970–1981: Collaborations with Hal Prince
[edit]Company
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Stephen_Sondheim%2C_New_York.jpg/220px-Stephen_Sondheim%2C_New_York.jpg)
After Do I Hear a Waltz?, Sondheim devoted himself solely to writing both music and lyrics for the theater—and in 1970, he began a collaboration with director Harold Prince resulting in a body of work that is considered one of the high water marks of musical theater history, with critic Howard Kissel writing that the duo had set "Broadway's highest standards".[46][47]
The first Sondheim show with Prince as director was 1970's Company. A show about a single man and his married friends, Company (with a book by George Furth) lacked a straightforward plot, instead centering on themes such as marriage and the difficulty of making an emotional connection with another person. It opened on April 26, 1970, at the Alvin Theatre, running for 705 performances after seven previews, and won Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Music, and Best Lyrics.[48] The original cast included Dean Jones, Elaine Stritch, and Charles Kimbrough. Popular songs include "Company", "The Little Things You Do Together", "Sorry-Grateful", "You Could Drive a Person Crazy", "Another Hundred People", "Getting Married Today", "Side by Side", "The Ladies Who Lunch", and "Being Alive". Walter Kerr of The New York Times praised the production, the performances, and the score, writing, "Sondheim has never written a more sophisticated, more pertinent, or—this is the surprising thing in the circumstances—more melodious score".[49]
Documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker captured the making of the original cast recording shortly after the show opened on Broadway in his 1970 film Original Cast Album: Company.[50][51] Stritch, Sondheim, and producer Thomas Z. Shepard are featured prominently. Company was revived on Broadway in 1995, 2006, and 2020/2021 (the last revival began previews in March 2020, but shut down before resuming in November 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; in this revival, the main character was a woman, Bobbie, portrayed by Katrina Lenk).[48] The 2006 and 2021 productions won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.
Follies
[edit]Follies (1971), with a book by James Goldman, opened on April 4, 1971, at the Winter Garden Theatre and ran for 522 performances after 12 previews.[52] The plot centers on a reunion, in a crumbling Broadway theater scheduled for demolition, of performers in Weismann's Follies (a musical revue, based on the Ziegfeld Follies, that played in that theater between the world wars). The production also featured choreography and co-direction by Michael Bennett, who later created A Chorus Line.
The original production starred Dorothy Collins, John McMartin, Alexis Smith, and Gene Nelson. It included the songs "I'm Still Here", "Could I Leave You?", and "Losing My Mind". The production earned 11 Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical. It won 7 Tony Awards, including Best Original Score. The show was revived on Broadway in 2001 and 2011.[53][54]
A Little Night Music
[edit]A Little Night Music (1973), based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night and with a score primarily in waltz time, was among Sondheim's greatest commercial successes. Time magazine called it his "most brilliant accomplishment to date".[55] The original cast included Glynis Johns, Len Cariou, Hermione Gingold, and Judy Kahan. The show opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on February 25, 1973, and ran for 601 performances and 12 previews.[56] Clive Barnes of The New York Times wrote, "A Little Night Music is soft on the ears, easy on the eyes, and pleasant on the mind. It is less than brash, but more than brassy, and it should give a lot of pleasure. It is the remembrance of a few things past, and all to the sound of a waltz and the understanding smile of a memory. Good God!—[an] adult musical!"[57]
The production earned 12 Tony Award nominations and won 6 awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. "Send in the Clowns", a song from the musical, was a hit for Judy Collins and became Sondheim's best-known song. It has since been covered by Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Judi Dench. The production was adapted to screen in the 1977 film of the same name starring Elizabeth Taylor, Dianna Rigg, Len Cariou, and Hermione Gingold. It was revived on Broadway in 2009 in a production starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury.[58]
Pacific Overtures
[edit]Pacific Overtures (1976), with a book by John Weidman, was one of Sondheim's most unconventional efforts: it explored the westernization of Japan, and was originally presented in a mock-Kabuki style.[59] The show closed after a run of 193 performances,[60] and was revived on Broadway in 2004.[61]
Sweeney Todd
[edit]Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), with a score by Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler, is based on Christopher Bond's 1973 stage play derived from the Victorian original.[62][63][64][65][66] The original production starred Angela Lansbury, Len Cariou, Victor Garber, and Edmund Lyndeck. Popular songs from the musical include "Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd", "The Worst Pies in London", "Pretty Women", "A Little Priest", "Not While I'm Around", "By the Sea", and "Johanna". The production earned 9 Tony Award nominations and won 8 awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Actress, and Best Actor. Richard Eder of The New York Times wrote: "Mr. Sondheim's lyrics can be endlessly inventive. There is a hugely amusing recitation of the attributes given by the different professions—priest, lawyer, and so on—to the pies they contribute to. At other times the lyrics have a black, piercing poetry to them."[67]
Lansbury's performance was captured alongside George Hearn in the Los Angeles production, which was filmed and shown on PBS as part of Masterpiece Theatre. It later earned five Primetime Emmy Award nominations. It has been revived on Broadway in 1989, 2005, and 2023. The 2023 production starred Josh Groban, Annaleigh Ashford, Jordan Fisher, and Gaten Matarazzo. A film adaptation was made in 2007 directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman.
Merrily We Roll Along
[edit]Merrily We Roll Along (1981), with a book by George Furth, is one of Sondheim's most traditional scores; songs from the musical were recorded by Frank Sinatra and Carly Simon. According to Sondheim's music director Paul Gemignani, "Part of Steve's ability is this extraordinary versatility". The show was not the success their previous collaborations had been: after a chaotic series of preview performances, it opened to widely negative reviews, and closed after a run of less than two weeks. Due to the high quality of Sondheim's score, the show has been repeatedly revised and produced in the ensuing years. Martin Gottfried wrote, "Sondheim had set out to write traditional songs ... But [despite] that there is nothing ordinary about the music."[68] Sondheim later said: "Did I feel betrayed? I'm not sure I would put it like that. What did surprise me was the feeling around the Broadway community—if you can call it that, though I guess I will for lack of a better word—that they wanted Hal and me to fail."[45] Sondheim and Furth continued to revise the show in subsequent years. An acclaimed feature documentary on the show and its aftermath, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, directed by Merrily cast member Lonny Price, and produced by Bruce David Klein, Kitt Lavoie, and Ted Schillinger, premiered at the New York Film Festival on November 18, 2016. A film adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Richard Linklater, began production in 2019 and is planned to continue for the next two decades to allow the actors to age in real time.[69] An Off-Broadway revival starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez ran from November 2022 to January 2023 at the New York Theatre Workshop; it moved to Broadway in fall 2023.
Merrily's failure greatly affected Sondheim; he was ready to quit theater and do movies, create video games or write mysteries: "I wanted to find something to satisfy myself that does not involve Broadway and dealing with all those people who hate me and hate Hal."[70] After Merrily, Sondheim and Prince did not collaborate again until their 2003 production of Bounce.[71]
1984–1994: Collaborations with James Lapine
[edit]Sunday in the Park with George
[edit]Sondheim decided "that there are better places to start a show" and found a new collaborator in James Lapine after he saw Lapine's Twelve Dreams off-Broadway in 1981: "I was discouraged, and I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't discovered Twelve Dreams at the Public Theatre";[45] Lapine has a taste "for the avant-garde and for visually oriented theater in particular". Their first collaboration was Sunday in the Park with George (1984), with Sondheim's music evoking Georges Seurat's pointillism. Sondheim and Lapine won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play,[72] and it was revived on Broadway in 2008, and again in a limited run in 2017.[73][74]
Into the Woods
[edit]They collaborated on Into the Woods (1987), a musical based on several Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Although Sondheim has been called the first composer to bring rap music to Broadway (with the Witch in the opening number of Into the Woods), he attributed the first rap in theater to Meredith Willson's "Rock Island" from The Music Man (1957).[27] Into the Woods was revived on Broadway in 2002[75] and at the St. James Theatre in 2022.
Passion
[edit]Sondheim's and Lapine's last collaboration on a musical was the rhapsodic Passion (1994), adapted from Ettore Scola's Italian film Passione D'Amore. With a run of 280 performances, Passion was the shortest-running show to win a Tony Award for Best Musical.[76]
1990–2021: Later work
[edit]Assassins
[edit]Assassins opened off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on December 18, 1990, with a book by John Weidman. The show explored, in revue form, a group of historical figures who tried (with varying success) to assassinate the President of the United States. The musical closed on February 16, 1991, after 73 performances. The Los Angeles Times reported the show "has been sold out since previews began, reflecting the strong appeal of Sondheim's work among the theater crowd."[77] In his review for The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, "Assassins will have to fire with sharper aim and fewer blanks if it is to shoot to kill."[78][79] Assassins was eventually staged on Broadway in 2004.[80]
Saturday Night was shelved until its 1997 production at London's Bridewell Theatre. The next year, its score was recorded; a revised version, with two new songs, ran off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre in 2000 and at London's Jermyn Street Theatre in 2009.[81]
Road Show
[edit]Sondheim and Weidman reunited during the late 1990s for Wise Guys, a musical comedy based on the lives of colorful businessmen Addison and Wilson Mizner. A Broadway production starring Nathan Lane and Victor Garber, directed by Sam Mendes, and planned for spring 2000,[82] was delayed. Renamed Bounce in 2003, the show premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in a production directed by Harold Prince, his first collaboration with Sondheim since 1981.[83] Poor reviews prevented Bounce from reaching Broadway, but a revised version opened off-Broadway as Road Show at the Public Theater on October 28, 2008. Directed by John Doyle, it closed December 28, 2008.[84][85][86] The production won the 2009 Obie Award for Music and Lyrics[87] and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.[88]
Sondheim on Sondheim and Six by Sondheim
[edit]Asked about writing new work, Sondheim replied in 2006: "No ... It's age. It's a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It's also an increasing lack of confidence. I'm not the only one. I've checked with other people. People expect more of you and you're aware of it and you shouldn't be."[89] In December 2007, he said that in addition to continuing work on Bounce, he was "nibbling at a couple of things with John Weidman and James Lapine".[90]
Lapine prepared the multimedia production iSondheim: aMusical Revue, which was scheduled to open in April 2009 at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta; it was canceled due to "difficulties encountered by the commercial producers attached to the project ... in raising the necessary funds".[91][92][93] Later revised as Sondheim on Sondheim, the revue was produced at Studio 54 by the Roundabout Theatre Company; previews began on March 19, 2010, and ran from April 22 to June 13. The revue's cast included Barbara Cook, Vanessa L. Williams, Tom Wopat, Norm Lewis, and Leslie Kritzer.[94]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Danya_Polykov_and_Stephen_Sondheim%2C_04.2014%2C_NYC_%28cropped%29.jpg/220px-Danya_Polykov_and_Stephen_Sondheim%2C_04.2014%2C_NYC_%28cropped%29.jpg)
In 2013, Lapine directed the HBO feature-length documentary Six by Sondheim, which he executive produced with former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich, a longtime champion of Sondheim's work.[95] Sondheim himself acts and sings in the documentary as Joe, the cynical theater producer in the song "Opening Doors".[96]
Sondheim collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair, an Encores! concert on November 13–17, 2013, at New York City Center. Directed by John Doyle with choreography by Parker Esse, it consisted of "more than two dozen Sondheim compositions, each piece newly reimagined by Marsalis".[97] The concert featured Bernadette Peters, Jeremy Jordan, Norm Lewis, Cyrille Aimée, four dancers, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra conducted by David Loud.[98] In Playbill, Steven Suskin called the concert "neither a new musical, a revival, nor a standard songbook revue; it is, rather, a staged-and-sung chamber jazz rendition of a string of songs ... Half of the songs come from Company and Follies; most of the other Sondheim musicals are represented, including the lesser-known Passion and Road Show".[99]
For the 2014 film adaptation of Into the Woods, Sondheim wrote the new song "She'll Be Back", sung by The Witch, which was cut from the film.[100]
Here We Are
[edit]Sondheim began collaborating with David Ives in 2014 on a musical based on the Luis Buñuel films The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, initially slated for previews at the Public Theater in 2017.[101] That date was cast into doubt after an August 2016 reading for the musical had only the first act finished.[102] A November 2016 workshop included Matthew Morrison, Shuler Hensley, Heidi Blickenstaff, Sierra Boggess, Gabriel Ebert, Sarah Stiles, Michael Cerveris, and Jennifer Simard.[103] After media outlets mistakenly reported that the show had the working title Buñuel, Sondheim said that it still lacked a title in 2017.[104] The Public Theatre denied reports that the show would be part of its 2019–20 season, but hoped to produce the musical "when it is ready".[105] Development reportedly ceased for a time,[106] but resumed for a September 2021 reading of the show, then called Square One.[107] Nathan Lane and Bernadette Peters were involved in a reading of this new work,[108] and Sondheim discussed adapting the Buñuel films in the final interview before his death.[109] A posthumous production of the collaboration, directed by Joe Mantello, premiered at The Shed in September 2023 as Here We Are.[110]
Other projects
[edit]Conversations with Frank Rich and others
[edit]The Kennedy Center staged a 15-week repertory festival of six Sondheim musicals—Sweeney Todd, Company, Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along, Passion, and A Little Night Music—from May to August 2002.[111][112][113] The Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration also included Pacific Overtures, a junior version of Into the Woods, and Frank Rich of The New York Times speaking with the composer for Sondheim on Sondheim on April 28, 2002.[111][114] The two men took their discussion, dubbed "A Little Night Conversation with Stephen Sondheim", on a West Coast tour of different U.S. cities[115][116] including Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Los Angeles,[117][118][119] and Portland, Oregon in March 2008,[120] then to Oberlin College in September. The Cleveland Jewish News reported on their Oberlin appearance: "Sondheim said: 'Movies are photographs; the stage is larger than life.' What musicals does Sondheim admire the most? Porgy and Bess tops a list which includes Carousel, She Loves Me, and The Wiz, which he saw six times. Sondheim took a dim view of today's musicals. What works now, he said, are musicals that are easy to take; audiences don't want to be challenged".[121][122] Sondheim and Rich had additional conversations: January 18, 2009, at Avery Fisher Hall;[123] February 2 at the Landmark Theatre in Richmond, Virginia;[124] February 21 at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia;[125] and April 20 at the University of Akron in Ohio.[126] The conversations were reprised at Tufts and Brown University in February 2010, at the University of Tulsa in April,[127] and at Lafayette College in March 2011.[128] Sondheim had another "conversation with" Sean Patrick Flahaven (associate editor of The Sondheim Review) at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach on February 4, 2009, in which he discussed many of his songs and shows: "On the perennial struggles of Broadway: 'I don't see any solution for Broadway's problems except subsidized theatre, as in most civilized countries of the world.'"[129]
On February 1, 2011, Sondheim joined former Salt Lake Tribune theater critic Nancy Melich before an audience of 1,200 at Kingsbury Hall. Melich described the evening:
He was visibly taken by the university choir, who sang two songs during the evening, "Children Will Listen" and "Sunday", and then returned to reprise "Sunday". During that final moment, Sondheim and I were standing, facing the choir of students from the University of Utah's opera program, our backs to the audience, and I could see tears welling in his eyes as the voices rang out. Then, all of a sudden, he raised his arms and began conducting, urging the student singers to go full out, which they did, the crescendo building, their eyes locked with his, until the final "on an ordinary Sunday" was sung. It was thrilling, and a perfect conclusion to a remarkable evening—nothing ordinary about it.[130]
On March 13, 2008, A Salon with Stephen Sondheim (which sold out in three minutes) was hosted by the Academy for New Musical Theatre in Hollywood.[131][132]
Work away from Broadway
[edit]Sondheim was an avid fan of puzzles and games. He is credited with introducing cryptic crosswords, a British invention, to American audiences through a series of cryptic crossword puzzles he created for New York magazine in 1968 and 1969.[133] Sondheim was "legendary" in theater circles for "concocting puzzles, scavenger hunts and murder-mystery games,"[10] inspiring the central character of Anthony Shaffer's 1970 play Sleuth.[134] Sondheim's love of puzzles and mysteries is evident in The Last of Sheila, an intricate whodunit written with longtime friend Anthony Perkins. The 1973 film, directed by Herbert Ross, featured Dyan Cannon, Joan Hackett, Raquel Welch, James Mason, James Coburn, Ian McShane, and Richard Benjamin.[135]
Sondheim also wrote occasional music for film: most notably, he contributed five songs to Warren Beatty's 1990 film Dick Tracy, including the ballad "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", sung in the film by Madonna, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. He also contributed to Reds (both to the score, and with the song "Goodbye for Now"), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution ("The Madam's Song", later recorded as "I Never Do Anything Twice"), Stavisky (writing the score), and The Birdcage ("Little Dream", and the eventually cut "It Takes All Kinds"). For the 2014 movie adaptation of Into the Woods, Sondheim wrote the new song "She'll Be Back" for the character of The Witch (played by Meryl Streep), which was eventually cut. Sondheim made a posthumous cameo appearance as himself in the 2022 Netflix film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.[136]
Sondheim collaborated with Company librettist George Furth to write the play Getting Away with Murder in 1996; the Broadway production closed after 31 previews and only 17 performances.[137]
In 2003, he was invited to serve as guest curator for the Telluride Film Festival.[138]
Mentoring
[edit]After he was mentored by Hammerstein,[17] Sondheim returned the favor, saying that he loved "passing on what Oscar passed on to me".[23] In an interview with Sondheim for The Legacy Project, composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (son of Mary Rodgers and grandson of Richard Rodgers) recalled how as a 14-year-old boy he showed Sondheim his work. Guettel was "crestfallen" since he had come in "sort of all puffed up thinking [he] would be rained with compliments and things", which was not the case since Sondheim had some "very direct things to say". Later, Sondheim wrote and apologized to Guettel for being "not very encouraging" when he was actually trying to be "constructive".[139]
Sondheim also mentored a fledgling Jonathan Larson, attending Larson's workshop for his Superbia (originally an adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four). In Larson's musical Tick, Tick... Boom!, the phone message is played in which Sondheim apologizes for leaving early, says he wants to meet him and is impressed with his work. After Larson's death, Sondheim called him one of the few composers "attempting to blend contemporary pop music with theater music, which doesn't work very well; he was on his way to finding a real synthesis. A good deal of pop music has interesting lyrics, but they are not theater lyrics". A musical-theater composer "must have a sense of what is theatrical, of how you use music to tell a story, as opposed to writing a song. Jonathan understood that instinctively."[140]
Around 2008, Sondheim approached Lin-Manuel Miranda to work with him translating West Side Story lyrics into Spanish for an upcoming Broadway revival.[141][142] Miranda then approached Sondheim with his new project Hamilton, then called The Hamilton Mixtape, which Sondheim gave notes on.[142][143] Sondheim was originally wary of the project, saying he was "worried that an evening of rap might get monotonous". But he believed Miranda's attention to, and respect for, good rhyming made it work.[143]
Sondheim provided a voice cameo for the 2021 film adaptation of Tick, Tick... Boom!, directed by Miranda, for the scene in which a fictionalized version of himself leaves a phone message. Sondheim worked on a revised text of the message and voiced it himself after Bradley Whitford, who portrays him, was unavailable to rerecord the line.[144]
Dramatists Guild
[edit]A supporter of writers' rights in the theater industry, Sondheim was an active member of the Dramatists Guild of America. In 1973, he was elected as the Guild's 16th president, serving until 1981.[145]
Unrealized projects
[edit]According to Sondheim, he was asked to translate Mahagonny-Songspiel: "But I'm not a Brecht/Weill fan and that's really all there is to it. I'm an apostate: I like Weill's music when he came to America better than I do his stuff before ... I love The Threepenny Opera but, outside of The Threepenny Opera, the music of his I like is the stuff he wrote in America—when he was not writing with Brecht, when he was writing for Broadway."[146] He turned down an offer to musicalize Nathanael West's A Cool Million with James Lapine c. 1982.[147][148]
Around 1960, Sondheim and Burt Shevelove considered making a musical of the film Sunset Boulevard, and had sketched out the opening scenes when they approached the film's director Billy Wilder at a cocktail party on the possibility. Wilder rejected the idea, believing the story was more suited to opera than musical theater. Sondheim agreed, and resisted a later offer from Prince and Hugh Wheeler to create a musical version starring Angela Lansbury. This occurred several years before a musical version was produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber.[149]
Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein wrote The Race to Urga, scheduled for Lincoln Center in 1969, but after Jerome Robbins left the project, it was not produced.[150]
After writing The Last of Sheila together, Sondheim and Anthony Perkins tried to collaborate again two more times, but the projects were unrealized. In 1975, Perkins said he and Sondheim were working on another script, The Chorus Girl Murder Case: "It's a sort of stew based on all those Bob Hope wartime comedies, plus a little Lady of Burlesque and a little Orson Welles magic show, all cooked into a Last of Sheila-type plot".[151] He later said other inspirations were They Got Me Covered, The Ipcress File, and Cloak and Dagger.[152] They had sold the synopsis in October 1974.[153] At one point, Michael Bennett was to direct, with Tommy Tune to star.[154] In November 1979, Sondheim said they had finished it,[155] but the film was never made.[156] In the 1980s, Perkins and Sondheim collaborated on another project, the seven-part Crime and Variations for Motown Productions. In October 1984 they had submitted a treatment to Motown.[157] It was a 75-page treatment set in the New York socialite world about a crime puzzle; another writer was to write the script. It, too, was never made.[158]
In 1991, Sondheim worked with Terrence McNally on a musical, All Together Now. McNally said, "Steve was interested in telling the story of a relationship from the present back to the moment when the couple first met. We worked together a while, but we were both involved with so many other projects that this one fell through". The story follows Arden Scott, a 30-something female sculptor, and Daniel Nevin, a slightly younger, sexually attractive restaurateur. Its script, with concept notes by McNally and Sondheim, is archived in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.[159] In February 2012, it was announced that Sondheim would collaborate on a musical titled All Together Now with David Ives and he had "about 20–30 minutes of the musical completed".[160][161][162][163][164] The show was assumed to follow the format of Merrily We Roll Along. Sondheim described the project as "two people and what goes into their relationship ... We'll write for a couple of months, then have a workshop. It seemed experimental and fresh 20 years ago. I have a feeling it may not be experimental and fresh anymore".[165] Ives later described All Together Now as "a musical that exploded a single moment in the lives of two people meeting for the first time. We'd see the moment without music and then we'd explore it musically." Ives and Sondheim worked on the piece intermittently until Sondheim's death, but it was ultimately unrealized.[166]
Sondheim worked with William Goldman on Singing Out Loud, a musical film, in 1992, penning the song "Water Under the Bridge".[167][168] According to Sondheim, he had written six and a half songs and Goldman one or two drafts of the script when director Rob Reiner lost interest in the project. "Dawn" and "Sand", from the film, were recorded for the albums Sondheim at the Movies and Unsung Sondheim.[146]
In August 2003, Sondheim expressed interest in the idea of creating a musical adaptation of the 1993 comedy film Groundhog Day,[169] but in a 2008 live chat, he said that "to make a musical of Groundhog Day would be to gild the lily. It cannot be improved."[170] The musical was later created and premiered in 2016 with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and book by Danny Rubin (screenwriter of the film) with Sondheim's blessing.[171]
Nathan Lane said that he once approached Sondheim about creating a musical based on the film Being There with Lane starring as the central character of Chance. Sondheim declined on the basis that the central character is essentially a cipher, whom an audience would not accept expressing himself through song.[172]
Major works
[edit]Honors and legacy
[edit]Sondheim received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards, and eight Grammy Awards. He also received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George (1985, shared with James Lapine) and was honored with the Kennedy Center Honors, Lifetime Achievement (1993).[110] He received the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition (1950) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1983). He was also awarded the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member James Earl Jones (2005),[176][177] the Algur H. Meadows Award from Southern Methodist University (1994),[178] a Special Laurence Olivier Award (2011) "in recognition of his contribution to London theatre",[179][180] and a Critics' Circle Theatre Award (2012), which according to drama section chair Mark Shenton "is effectively a lifetime achievement award."[181] He became a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame (2014).[182] In 2013, Sondheim was awarded The Edward MacDowell Medal by The MacDowell Colony for outstanding contributions to American culture[183] In November 2015, Sondheim was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in a ceremony at the White House.[b][185][186]
Sondheim founded Young Playwrights Inc. in 1981 to introduce young people to writing for the theater, and was the organization's executive vice-president.[187] The Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts, at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center in Fairfield, Iowa, opened in December 2007 with performances by Len Cariou, Liz Callaway, and Richard Kind, all of whom had participated in Sondheim musicals.[188][189]
The Stephen Sondheim Society was established in 1993 to provide information about his work, with its Sondheim – the Magazine provided to its membership. The society maintains a database, organizes productions, meetings, outings, and other events, and assists with publicity. Its annual Student Performer of the Year Competition awards a £1,000 prize to one of twelve musical-theatre students from UK drama schools and universities. At Sondheim's request, an additional prize is offered for a new song by a young composer. Judged by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, each contestant performs a Sondheim song and a new song.[190][191][192]
Most episode titles of the television series Desperate Housewives refer to Sondheim's song titles or lyrics,[193][194][195][196] and the series finale is titled "Finishing the Hat".[197] In 1990, Sondheim, as the Cameron Mackintosh chair in musical theater at Oxford,[198] conducted workshops with promising musical writers including George Stiles, Anthony Drewe, Andrew Peggie, Paul James, Kit Hesketh-Harvey, and Stephen Keeling. The writers founded the Mercury Workshop in 1992, which merged with the New Musicals Alliance to become MMD (a UK-based organization to develop new musical theater, of which Sondheim was a patron).[199]
Signature Theatre in Arlington County, Virginia established its Sondheim Award, which includes a $5,000 donation to a nonprofit organization of the recipient's choice, "as a tribute to America's most influential contemporary musical theatre composer". The first award, to Sondheim, was presented at an April 27, 2009, benefit with performances by Bernadette Peters, Michael Cerveris, Will Gartshore, and Eleasha Gamble.[200][201][202] The 2010 recipient was Angela Lansbury, with Peters and Catherine Zeta-Jones hosting the April benefit.[203] The 2011 honoree was Bernadette Peters.[204] Other recipients were Patti LuPone in 2012,[205] Hal Prince in 2013, Jonathan Tunick in 2014,[206] and James Lapine in 2015.[207] The 2016 awardee was John Weidman[208] and the 2017 awardee was Cameron Mackintosh.[209]
Henry Miller's Theatre, on West 43rd Street in New York City, was renamed the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on September 15, 2010, for the composer's 80th birthday. In attendance were Nathan Lane, Patti LuPone, and John Weidman. Sondheim said in response to the honor, "I'm deeply embarrassed. Thrilled, but deeply embarrassed. I've always hated my last name. It just doesn't sing. I mean, it's not Belasco. And it's not Rodgers and it's not Simon. And it's not Wilson. It just doesn't sing. It sings better than Schoenfeld and Jacobs. But it just doesn't sing". Lane said, "We love our corporate sponsors and we love their money, but there's something sacred about naming a theatre, and there's something about this that is right and just".[210]
In 2010, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Sondheim was "almost certainly" the only living composer with a quarterly journal published in his name;[211] The Sondheim Review, founded in 1994, chronicled and promoted his work. It ceased publication in 2016.[212]
In Greta Gerwig's 2017 film Lady Bird, characters perform songs from Merrily We Roll Along, Into the Woods, and Anyone Can Whistle. In 2019, it was observed in the media that three major films of that year prominently featured Sondheim songs: Joker (Wall Street businessmen sing "Send In the Clowns" on the subway),[213] Marriage Story (Adam Driver sings "Being Alive"; Scarlett Johansson, Merritt Wever, and Julie Hagerty sing "You Can Drive a Person Crazy"),[214] and Knives Out (Daniel Craig sings "Losing My Mind").[213] Sondheim's work has also been referenced in television, such as The Morning Show (Jennifer Aniston and Billy Crudup sing "Not While I'm Around").[215]
Sondheim at 80
[edit]Several benefits and concerts were performed to celebrate Sondheim's 80th birthday in 2010. Among them were the New York Philharmonic's March 15 and 16 Sondheim: The Birthday Concert at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, hosted by David Hyde Pierce. The concert included Sondheim's music, performed by some of the original performers. Lonny Price directed, and Paul Gemignani conducted; performers included Laura Benanti, Matt Cavenaugh, Michael Cerveris, Victoria Clark, Jenn Colella, Jason Danieley, Alexander Gemignani, Joanna Gleason, Nathan Gunn, George Hearn, Patti LuPone, Marin Mazzie, Audra McDonald, John McMartin, Donna Murphy, Karen Olivo, Laura Osnes, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Bobby Steggert, Elaine Stritch, Jim Walton, Chip Zien, and the 2009 Broadway revival cast of West Side Story. A ballet was performed by Blaine Hoven and María Noel Riccetto to Sondheim's score for Reds, and Jonathan Tunick paid tribute to his longtime collaborator.[216][217] The concert was broadcast on PBS's Great Performances show in November,[218] and its DVD was released on November 16.
Sondheim 80, a Roundabout Theatre Company benefit, was held on March 22. The evening included a performance of Sondheim on Sondheim, dinner and a show at the New York Sheraton. "A very personal star-studded musical tribute" featured new songs by contemporary musical-theater writers. The composers (who sang their own songs) included Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, Michael John LaChiusa, Andrew Lippa, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Lin-Manuel Miranda (accompanied by Rita Moreno), Duncan Sheik, and Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire. Bernadette Peters performed a song that had been cut from a Sondheim show.[219][220]
An April 26 New York City Center birthday celebration and concert to benefit Young Playwrights, among others, featured (in order of appearance) Michael Cerveris, Alexander Gemignani, Donna Murphy, Debra Monk, Joanna Gleason, Maria Friedman, Mark Jacoby, Len Cariou, BD Wong, Claybourne Elder, Alexander Hanson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Raúl Esparza, Sutton Foster, Nathan Lane, Michele Pawk, the original cast of Into the Woods, Kim Crosby, Chip Zien, Danielle Ferland, and Ben Wright, Angela Lansbury, and Jim Walton. The concert, directed by John Doyle, was co-hosted by Mia Farrow; greetings from Sheila Hancock, Julia McKenzie, Milton Babbitt, Judi Dench, and Glynis Johns were read. After Catherine Zeta-Jones performed "Send in the Clowns", Julie Andrews sang part of "Not a Day Goes By" in a recorded greeting. Patti LuPone, Barbara Cook, Bernadette Peters, Tom Aldredge, and Victor Garber were originally scheduled to perform, but did not appear.[221][222]
A July 31 BBC Proms concert celebrated Sondheim's 80th birthday at the Royal Albert Hall. The concert featured songs from many of his musicals, including "Send in the Clowns" sung by Judi Dench (reprising her role as Desirée in the 1995 production of A Little Night Music), and performances by Bryn Terfel and Maria Friedman.[223][224]
On November 19 the New York Pops, led by Steven Reineke, performed at Carnegie Hall for the composer's 80th birthday. Kate Baldwin, Aaron Lazar, Christiane Noll, Paul Betz, Renee Rakelle, Marilyn Maye (singing "I'm Still Here"), and Alexander Gemignani appeared, and songs included "I Remember", "Another Hundred People", "Children Will Listen", and "Getting Married Today". Sondheim took the stage during an encore of his song, "Old Friends".[225][226]
Sondheim at 90
[edit]To honor Sondheim's 90th birthday, The New York Times published a special nine-page Theater supplement on March 15, 2020, featuring comments by "Critics, Performers and Fans on the Bard of Broadway."[227] Due to theater closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Broadway revival of Company set to open on March 22, 2020, Sondheim's 90th birthday, was delayed.[228] But the virtual concert Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration was livestreamed on the Broadway.com YouTube channel on April 26. Participants in the event included Lin-Manuel Miranda, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Nathan Lane, Mandy Patinkin, Victor Garber, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, Neil Patrick Harris, Jake Gyllenhaal, Christine Baranski, Sutton Foster, Josh Groban, Ben Platt, Brandon Uranowitz, Katrina Lenk, Kelli O'Hara, Jason Alexander, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Beanie Feldstein, Audra McDonald, Laura Benanti, and Raúl Esparza.[229][230][231] After New York City theaters reopened in 2021, Sondheim attended revivals of two of his musicals: the opening night of Assassins at the Classic Stage Company on November 14, and the first post-shutdown preview of Company at the Jacobs Theatre on November 15.[37][232]
Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends
[edit]In 2022, Cameron Mackintosh presented Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, a two-hour concert tribute to the late Sondheim. The concert happened in the West End in May and aired on BBC Two in December. Performers at the event included Helena Bonham Carter, Rob Brydon, Petula Clark, Judi Dench, Damian Lewis, Julia McKenzie, Bernadette Peters, and Imelda Staunton. Highlights included Dench singing "Send in the Clowns", Peters singing "Children Will Listen", and Staunton's "Everything's Coming Up Roses".
Mackintosh revived the tribute for a limited run at the Gielgud Theatre beginning previews on September 16, 2023, with a planned closing on January 6, 2024.[233] The production stars Bernadette Peters, marking her West End debut, and Lea Salonga, returning to the West End for the first time since 1996.
Style and themes
[edit]According to Sondheim, when he asked Milton Babbitt if he could study atonality, Babbitt replied: "You haven't exhausted tonal resources for yourself yet, so I'm not going to teach you atonal".[234] Music critic Anthony Tommasini wrote that Sondheim's work, "while hewing to a tonal musical language, activated harmonies and folded elements of jazz and Impressionist styles in his own distinctive, exhilarating voice."[235]
Sondheim is known for complex polyphony in his vocals, such as the five minor characters who make up a Greek chorus in 1973's A Little Night Music. He used angular harmonies and intricate melodies. His musical influences were varied; although he said that he "loves Bach", his favorite musical period was from Brahms to Stravinsky.[236]
Raymond-Jean Frontain writes that thematically, Sondheim's musicals occupy a paradoxical place in gay culture, describing him as a gay creative artist who never created an explicitly gay character, but nevertheless attained gay cult status. Frontain continues:
He incarnates the paradox of a highly intellectualized gay perspective that prizes ambivalence, undercuts traditional American progressivism, and rejects the musical's historically idealistic view of sex, romance, and the family; but that at the same time eschews camp, deconstructs the diva, and is apparently oblivious to AIDS, the post-Stonewall struggle for civil equality, and other socio-political issues that concern most gay men of his generation.[237]
Luca Prono described Sondheim's work as rejecting the traditional image of the Western world typically presented in Broadway productions, and instead depicting it as "predatory and alienating". His works have acquired a cult following with queer audiences, and his songs have been adopted as life scores for successive generations of gays, and have often had a primary role in AIDS fundraising events.[238] "Somewhere" from West Side Story was informally adopted as a gay anthem before the start of the gay liberation movement, but Sondheim rejected that reading, saying, "If you think that's a gay song, then all songs about getting away from the realities of life are gay songs."[239]
In an interview with Terry Gross for the Fresh Air program on NPR, Sondheim stated,
I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences," [...] "Otherwise I would be in concert music. I'd be in another kind of profession. I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry – just making them feel – is paramount to me."[240]
Matt Zoller Seitz characterized Sondheim's work for its bravery to express the truth, in all its complexity: "compassionately but without sugarcoating anything," devoid of the "easy reassurances and neat resolutions" typically demanded in the marketplace.[241]
Personal life and death
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/I_Stephen_Sondheim_House%2C_New_York_City%2C_NY%2C_USA_%282%29.jpg/170px-I_Stephen_Sondheim_House%2C_New_York_City%2C_NY%2C_USA_%282%29.jpg)
Sondheim was often described as introverted and solitary. In an interview with Frank Rich, he said: "The outsider feeling—somebody who people want to both kiss and kill—occurred quite early in my life". Sondheim jokingly told the New York Times in 1966: "I've never found anybody I could work with as quickly as myself, or with less argument", although he described himself as "naturally a collaborative animal".[242]
Sondheim came out as gay at the age of 40.[11][243] He rarely discussed his personal life, though he said in 2013 that he had not been in love before he turned 60, when he entered into a roughly eight-year relationship with dramatist Peter Jones.[244][245] Sondheim married Jeffrey Scott Romley, a digital technologist, in 2017; they lived in Manhattan and Roxbury, Connecticut.[242]
In 2010–2011, Sondheim published, in two volumes, his autobiography, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes[246] and Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany.[247] The memoir included Sondheim's lyrical declaration of principle, stating that four principles underpinned "everything I've ever written". These were: "Content Dictates Form, Less is More, God is in the Details – all in the service of Clarity."[242]
In Six by Sondheim, James Lapine's 2013 documentary film about the creative process, Sondheim revealed that he liked to write his music lying down and would occasionally have a cocktail to help him write.[248]
Sondheim died of cardiovascular disease at his home in Roxbury on November 26, 2021, at the age of 91.[37] Collaborator and friend Jeremy Sams said Sondheim "died in the arms of his husband Jeff".[249] On December 8, 2021, Broadway theaters dimmed their marquee lights for one minute as a tribute.[250]
It is estimated that Sondheim's estate, including the rights to his work, was valued at around $75 million, the entirety of which was placed in trust. In his will, he named F. Richard Pappas and a second unnamed individual as the executors. Beneficiaries included his husband, Jeff; his frequent collaborator James Lapine; former lover Peter Jones; former assistant Steven Clar; designer Peter Wooster; gardener Rob Girard; the Smithsonian Institution; the Library of Congress; and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.[251]
Published works
[edit]- Stephen Sondheim's Crossword Puzzles: From New York Magazine (1980) ISBN 0-06-090708-8
- Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes (2010) ISBN 978-0-679-43907-3
- Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany (2011) ISBN 9780307593412
Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Remarks by the President at Medal of Freedom Ceremony". White House. November 24, 2015. Archived from the original on August 28, 2017. Retrieved November 23, 2019 – via National Archives.
- ^ "About Stephen Sondheim". Everything Sondheim. Archived from the original on August 12, 2020. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
- ^ Weber, Bruce (July 31, 2019). "Hal Prince, Giant of Broadway and Reaper of Tonys, Dies at 91". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on August 1, 2019. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
- ^ a b c d e "Stephen Sondheim Biography and Interview". achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on December 19, 2016. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
- ^ "The Bard of Ambivalence". Jewish Currents. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
- ^ "Winners". tonyawards.com. Archived from the original on October 3, 2021. Retrieved October 3, 2021.
- ^ a b Secrest 1998, Ch. 1
- ^ a b c "A Stephen Sondheim Timeline". John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Archived from the original on May 26, 2021. Retrieved May 26, 2021.
- ^ Brown, Mick (September 27, 2010). "Still cutting it at 80: Stephen Sondheim interview". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on April 22, 2018. Retrieved February 9, 2018.
- ^ a b c Henry, William A III (December 7, 1987). "Master of the Musical; Stephen Sondheim Applies a Relentless". Time. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved March 19, 2007.
- ^ a b c d e f Rich, Frank (March 12, 2000). "Conversations With Sondheim". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 23, 2006. Retrieved January 17, 2007.
- ^ King, Robert A. (1972). The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Yale University Press. p. 310. ISBN 0-300-11996-8.
- ^ Secrest 1998, p. 30.
- ^ Schiff, Stephen (2010). "Deconstructing Sondheim". The Sondheim Review. XVII (2). Sondheim Review, Inc.: 17. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (March 20, 1994). "Sondheim's Passionate "Passion"". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 15, 2013. Retrieved April 7, 2012.
... she wrote me a letter, hand-delivered because she thought she was going to die and she wanted to make sure I got it. She said, 'The night before I undergo open heart surgery,' – underlined three times. Open parenthesis. 'My surgeon's term.' Close parenthesis. 'The only regret I have in life is giving you birth.'
- ^ Secrest 1998, p. 272: "Sondheim was in London when his mother died and did not return for her funeral.".
- ^ a b Zadan 1986, p. 4.
- ^ Kaufman, David (October 5, 1998). "Book review: Stephen Sondheim: A Life". The Nation. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ "Sondheim's Saturday Night at the Jermyn Street Theatre – MusicalCriticism.com (Musical Theatre review)". MusicalCriticism.com. Archived from the original on October 28, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Secrest 1998, pp. 78–79.
- ^ "Oscar Hammerstein 2d Is Dead; Librettist and Producer Was 65". The New York Times. August 23, 1960. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ "Conversations With Sondheim". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 18, 2007. Retrieved February 9, 2018.
- ^ a b "Stephen Sondheim with Adam Guettel". December 7, 2010. Archived from the original on June 1, 2014. Retrieved July 4, 2014 – via YouTube.
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim for Piano – Guides". musopen.org (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on February 10, 2018. Retrieved February 9, 2018.
- ^ Schiff, Stephen (2010). "Deconstructing Sondheim". The Sondheim Review. XVII (2). Sondheim Review, Inc.: 16. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ a b c "An early influence". The Sondheim Review. XVII (4). Sondheim Review, Inc.: 6 2011. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ a b "A Conversation with Stephen Sondheim". May 9, 2012. Archived from the original on April 9, 2019. Retrieved December 9, 2017 – via YouTube.
- ^ Lipton, James (1997). "The Art of the Musical Stephen Sondheim". The Paris Review. Vol. Spring 1997, no. 142. Archived from the original on October 27, 2010. Retrieved September 4, 2013.
- ^ Citron, Stephen (2001). Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber: The New Musical. Oxford University Press. p. 238. ISBN 978-0-19-509601-9.
- ^ Citron 2001, p. 47
- ^ Mitchell, Elvis (August 28, 2003). "Sondheim, Film Aficionado; Choices for Telluride Festival Show Nonmusical Side". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 27, 2021. Retrieved March 28, 2008.
- ^ Jesse Green (March 15, 2020). "Isn't He Something". The New York Times. No. Theater p. AR 11.
- ^ Dembin, Russell M. "Forum at 50? It's possible! Sondheim 101: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Archived July 14, 2014, at the Wayback Machine sondheimreview.com, 2012
- ^ Zadan 1986, p. 38.
- ^ Skethway, Nathan (May 8, 2021). "Look Back at the Original Production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". Playbill. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ "The Tony Award Nominations". Tony Awards. 1963. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Weber, Bruce (November 26, 2021). "Stephen Sondheim, Titan of the American Musical, Is Dead at 91". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 26, 2021. Retrieved November 26, 2021.
- ^ Laurents, Arthur (2000) Original Story By, New York: Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 0-375-40055-9, p. 212
- ^ Secrest 1998, pp. 174–175.
- ^ Chapin, Ted (2003) Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41328-5
- ^ The Mad Show: A Musical Revue Based on Mad Magazine, Samuel French Inc
- ^ ""I Remember": Original "Evening Primrose" Director Recalls Making of TV Musical". Playbill. October 22, 2010. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
- ^ a b Secrest, Meryle (2011). "Being Alive". Stephen Sondheim: A Life. Vintage Books. pp. 1188–. ISBN 978-0-307-94684-3.
- ^ Abernathy, June."Sondheim's Lost Musical" Archived March 20, 2012, at the Wayback Machine sondheim.com. Retrieved February 5, 2012.
- ^ a b c Wolf, Matt. "Stephen Sondheim: An audience with a theatre legend" Archived September 27, 2017, at the Wayback Machine The Independent, April 2013
- ^ Ilson, Carol (1989). Harold Prince: A Director's Journey. Limelight Editions. p. 239. ISBN 978-0879102968.
- ^ Romano, Aja (August 1, 2019). "Broadway director Harold Prince left an unparalleled legacy of masterworks". Vox. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ a b Franklin, Marc J. (April 26, 2021). "Look Back at the Original Production of Company on Broadway". Playbill. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Kerr, Walter (May 3, 1970). "Company: Original and Uncompromising". The New York Times. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
- ^ Brody, Richard (July 10, 2020). "The Unstrung Power of Elaine Stritch in "Original Cast Album: Company"". The New Yorker. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ^ Saltz, Rachel (October 11, 2014). "Invincible Bunch, 44 Years Later". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ^ Everett, Todd (April 7, 1994). "THEATER REVIEW : Conejo 'Follies' Not Same Old Song, Dance : The Sondheim musical may have fizzled on Broadway, but the local production spotlights the show's strengths". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ "Follies". Playbill. 2001. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Brantley, Ben (September 13, 2011). "Darkness Around the Spotlight". The New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ "A Precious Fancy". Time. March 19, 1973. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved March 19, 2007.
- ^ "A Little Night Music". Internet Broadway Database. The Broadway League. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ "The Theater: 'A Little Night Music'". The New York Times. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
- ^ Brantley, Ben (December 14, 2009). "A Weekend in the Country With Eros and Thanatos". The New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Swed, Mark (July 15, 2002). "Cultural Fine-Tuning of 'Pacific Overtures'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ "Pacific Overtures". Internet Broadway Database. The Broadway League. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Brantley, Ben (December 3, 2004). "Repatriating the Japanese Sondheim". The New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Berkvist, Robert. "Stephen Sondheim Takes a Stab at Grand Guignol" Archived September 29, 2017, at the Wayback Machine. The New York Times, February 25, 1979
- ^ "Sweeney Todd". Sondheim.com. Archived from the original on November 16, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Wheeler, Hugh; Sondheim, Stephen. "Sweeney Todd script, Introduction by Christopher Bond". Hal Leonard Corporation, 1991, ISBN 1-55783-066-5, p. 1
- ^ "'Sweeney Todd' listing" "Based on a Version of "Sweeney Todd" by Christopher Bond". Sondheimguide.com. Archived from the original on May 25, 2016. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Brown, Larry. "'Sweeney Todd' Notes" Archived March 7, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Larryavisbrown.homestead.com. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
- ^ "Stage: Introducing 'Sweeney Todd'". The New York Times. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
- ^ Gottfried, Martin (photos By Martha Swope), Sondheim, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993, pgs. 146–147 ISBN 978-0-8109-3844-1 ISBN 0-8109-3844-8
- ^ Galuppo, Mia (August 29, 2019). "Richard Linklater Musical to Be Filmed Over 20-Year Span". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Gottfried 1993, p. 153.
- ^ Simonson, Robert; Jones, Kenneth (June 30, 2003). "Sondheim and Prince Bounce Back After 20 Years with Goodman Theatre Premiere, June 30". Playbill. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ "1985 Pulitzer Prizes". pulitzer.org. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ Zinoman, Jason (February 17, 2008). "Who's That Kid Staging Sondheim?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on February 18, 2008. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ McPhee, Ryan (February 23, 2017). "Jake Gyllenhaal-Led Sunday in the Park With George Opens on Broadway Feb. 23". Playbill. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ Pressley, Nelson (May 1, 2002). "A Spruced-Up 'Into the Woods' Grows on Broadway". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ Simon, Lizzie (February 26, 2013). "A Theater Group Breaks Into Song". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on November 11, 2017. Retrieved August 9, 2013.
- ^ Fox, David."Critics Say 'Assassins' Will Have to Bite the Bullet : Stage: Some reviewers find Stephen Sondheim's Off Broadway musical fails to hit the target." Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1991
- ^ Evans, Greg. "Crix Hang 'Assassins;' B'way Out of Range?" Variety (February 4, 1991): 95. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 147. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002
- ^ Rich, Frank."Review/Theater; Sondheim and Those Who Would Kill", The New York Times, January 28, 1991.
- ^ Grady, Constance (November 26, 2021). "In Sondheim's Assassins, cornball Americana can't cover a seething mass of violent rage". Vox. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ "Sondheim's Saturday Night to Play London's Jermyn Street Theatre in 2009". Playbill. Archived from the original on December 27, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Bahr, David (October 12, 1999). "Everything's coming up Sondheim". The Advocate. Archived from the original on August 7, 2013. Retrieved March 19, 2007.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth (June 20, 2003). "Sondheim and Prince Reunite for Musical Comedy, Bounce, Bowing in Chicago Prior to DC". Playbill. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth (August 12, 2008). "Sondheim & Weidman's Bounce Is Now Called Road Show; Cast Announced". Playbill. Retrieved June 24, 2019.
- ^ "Public Theater 2008–09 listing". The Public Theater. Archived from the original on August 1, 2008. Retrieved August 2, 2008.
- ^ Hetrick, Adam (October 28, 2008). "Sondheim and Weidman's Road Show Pulls Into the Public Oct. 28". Playbill.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth (May 19, 2009). "Groff, Nottage, Sondheim, Cromer, Pisoni, Korins Among 2009 OBIE Award Winners". Playbill. Retrieved June 24, 2019.
- ^ Gans, Andrew (May 18, 2009). "Ruined and Billy Elliot Win Top Honors at Drama Desk Awards". Playbill. Retrieved April 27, 2019.
- ^ Edwardes, Jane (May 9, 2006). "Stephen Sondheim: Interview". Time Out. Archived from the original on December 28, 2008.
- ^ "2007 Interview: Stephen Sondheim for "Sweeney Todd"". Darkhorizons.com. Archived from the original on December 14, 2007. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Lapine to Create iSondheim: aMusical Revue for Alliance Theatre" Playbill, September 12, 2008.
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Liz Callaway Cast in World Premiere of iSondheim: aMusical Revue" Playbill, February 4, 2009.
- ^ Gans, Andrew and Hetrick, Adam. "Atlanta's Alliance Theatre Cancels Sondheim Revue; Brel Will Play Instead" Playbill, February 26, 2009.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Sondheim on Sondheim, a New Musical Reflection of a Life in Art, Begins on Broadway" Playbill, March 19, 2010.
- ^ Rooney, David (December 2, 2013). "Six by Sondheim: TV Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on November 29, 2021. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ Wontorek, Paul (December 8, 2013). "James Lapine on Making Six by Sondheim, His Hollywood Dreams for Sunday in the Park and Getting Sondheim to Actually Sing on Screen". Broadway.com. Archived from the original on December 11, 2013. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim and Wynton Marsalis' Collaboration for City Center Has New Title; Parker Esse Will Choreograph". Playbill. Archived from the original on November 9, 2013. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Champion, Lindsay. "Meet the Jazzy Cast of Sondheim & Marsalis' 'A Bed and a Chair', Starring Bernadette Peters & Jeremy Jordan" Archived November 9, 2013, at the Wayback Machine broadway.com, November 7, 2013
- ^ Suskin, Steven. "Stephen Sondheim and Wynton Marsalis Offer a Comfortable Bed and a Chair at City Center" Archived December 12, 2013, at the Wayback Machine playbill.com, November 14, 2013
- ^ Robbins, Caryn (February 27, 2015). "VIDEO: Meryl Streep Performs INTO THE WOODS Deleted Song 'She'll Be Back'!". BroadwayWorld. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim and David Ives at Work on New Musical Based on Films of Luis Buñuel". Playbill. October 12, 2014. Archived from the original on November 15, 2014. Retrieved November 29, 2014.
- ^ Riedel, Michael "Stephen Sondheim is halfway done with his new musical" Archived February 9, 2018, at the Wayback Machine New York Post, August 26, 2016
- ^ Viagas, Robert. "Matthew Morrison Says Sondheim's New Buñuel Musical Is "Challenging" " Archived January 16, 2018, at the Wayback Machine Playbill, January 4, 2017
- ^ Wong, Wayman. "BWW Exclusive: Sondheim Knocks Riedel's Reporting; Says His New Musical Was Never Called Bunuel". Archived February 9, 2018, at the Wayback Machine BroadwayWorld.com, April 26, 2017
- ^ Paulson, Michael (June 6, 2019). "'For Colored Girls' and 'Soft Power' Will be Part of Public Theater Season". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 24, 2019. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
- ^ Gans, Andrew (April 27, 2021). "Stephen Sondheim Musical Buñuel No Longer in Development". Playbill. Archived from the original on May 1, 2021. Retrieved May 2, 2021.
- ^ Sondheim shared news of the reading during a September 15, 2021, appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Stephen Sondheim Is Still Writing New Works, As "Company" Returns To Broadway, September 16, 2021, archived from the original on October 30, 2021, retrieved September 16, 2021
- ^ Major, Michael. "VIDEO: Nathan Lane Talks Reading of a New Sondheim Musical With Bernadette Peters". BroadwayWorld.com. Archived from the original on September 16, 2021. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
- ^ Paulson, Michael (November 27, 2021). "Days Before Dying, Stephen Sondheim Reflected: 'I've Been Lucky'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ a b c Evans, Greg (March 16, 2023). "Final Stephen Sondheim Musical 'Here We Are' To Make Off Broadway World Premiere This Fall With Joe Mantello Directing". Deadline. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
- ^ a b "Sondheim Guide listing for Kennedy Center Celebration, 2002". Sondheimguide.com. Archived from the original on September 29, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. 'It's a Hit! Kennedy Center's Sondheim Celebration Is Already Half-Sold" Archived September 24, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, playbill.com, February 13, 2002.
- ^ "Sondheim Cast" Archived October 16, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, kennedy-center.org. Retrieved May 17, 2015.
- ^ "Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration". Kennedy-center.org. Archived from the original on January 12, 2019. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ A. M. Homes (February 22, 2008). "On the Road: Rich evenings with Sondheim". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on November 29, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Santa Barbara Independent, Interview with Sondheim about the talks, March 6, 2008". Santa Barbara Independent. March 6, 2008. Archived from the original on December 27, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Student Affairs Information Systems, webmaster@sa.ucsb.edu. "UCSB listing". Artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu. Archived from the original on October 9, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "UCLA listing". Magazine.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on August 7, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Rich schedule". Frankrich.com. Archived from the original on October 5, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Webb, Rebecca. "Stephen Sondheim". KINK. Archived from the original on December 26, 2008.
- ^ [1] Archived July 5, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Heller, Fran. "Sondheim scores a hit at Oberlin College" Archived April 24, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Cleveland Jewish News, October 10, 2008
- ^ Gans, Andrew. "Sondheim and Rich Will Discuss A Life in the Theater in January 2009" Archived January 7, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, November 11, 2008
- ^ [2] [dead link]
- ^ [3] Archived December 27, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim with Frank Rich listing". Ejthomashall.com. Retrieved September 28, 2014.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Sondheim conversation set for TU". Tulsa World. April 18, 2010. Archived from the original on January 19, 2012. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "A Life in the Theater: Broadway Legend Stephen Sondheim Visits Campus · About · Lafayette College". Lafayette.edu. March 9, 2011. Archived from the original on March 8, 2012. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Maupin, Elizabeth. "Sondheim talks. And talks. And talks." Archived August 26, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Orlandosentinel.com, February 5, 2009
- ^ "More from Sondheim". The Sondheim Review. XVII (4). Sondheim Review, Inc.: 6 2011. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ "Sondheim salon is a hot ticket". Los Angeles Times. April 2, 2009. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
- ^ "A Salon with Stephen Sondheim at ANMT". June 20, 2008. Archived from the original on May 23, 2015. Retrieved July 4, 2014 – via YouTube.
- ^
- Healy, Patrick (September 16, 2011). "This Time It's Crosswords (Not Cross Words) That Surface From Sondheim". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 11, 2020. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
- Stephenson, Hugh (April 16, 2015). "The story of how cryptic crosswords crossed the Atlantic". The Guardian. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
- Parr, Andrew (May 2021). "Call Me Steve" (PDF). Games World of Puzzles. Vol. 45, no. 4. pp. 33–37.
- Pender, Rick (2021). "Puzzles, Games, and Mysteries". The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 423–425. ISBN 9781538115862.
- Zimmer, Ben (December 4, 2021). "Stephen Sondheim Didn't Just Change Musicals. He Changed Crosswords". Slate.
- ^ Producer Morton Gottlieb shared a manuscript bearing Who's Afraid of Stephen Sondheim? as the play's working title. THEATER: Of Mystery, Murder and Other Delights The New York Times Books, March 10, 1996.
- ^ Gordon, Joanne (2014). Stephen Sondheim: A Casebook. Routledge. pp. 85–88. ISBN 978-1-135-70210-6. Retrieved December 7, 2021.
- ^ Lee Lenker, Maureen (November 25, 2022). "Angela Lansbury filmed her Glass Onion role on a laptop: Inside all the Knives Out 2 cameos". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved November 25, 2022.
- ^ "Getting Away With Murder". Internet Broadway Database. The Broadway League. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Mitchell, Elvis (August 28, 2003). "Sondheim, Film Aficionado; Choices for Telluride Festival Show Nonmusical Side". The New York Times. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
- ^ Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel (2011). The Legacy Project: Stephen Sondheim (In Conversation with Adam Guettel) – Educational Version with Public Performance Rights (DVD). Transient Pictures.
- ^ Anthony Tommasini (February 11, 1996). "THEATER;A Composer's Death Echoes in His Musical – New York Times". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 6, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
- ^ McCarter, Jeremy (August 24, 2008). "This Could Drive a Person Crazy". New York. Archived from the original on March 18, 2016. Retrieved April 17, 2016.
- ^ a b Rebecca Mead (February 9, 2015). "All About The Hamiltons". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on September 30, 2017. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
- ^ a b Rosen, Jody (July 8, 2015). "The American Revolutionary". The New York Times Style Magazine. Archived from the original on June 17, 2016. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
- ^ "Lin-Manuel Miranda Reveals That Stephen Sondheim Rewrote His Voicemail Scene in 'Tick, Tick... BOOM!'". Decider. November 29, 2021. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim – Dramatists Guild Foundation". dgf.org. Archived from the original on November 28, 2021. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ a b Cerasaro, Pat."Stephen Sondheim Talks Past Present Future" Archived November 14, 2010, at the Wayback Machine broadwayworld.com, November 3, 2010
- ^ Bixby, Suzanne (2008). "Jumping In". The Sondheim Review. XVI (4). Sondheim Review, Inc.: 28. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ Isenberg, Barbara."Meet Mr. Plucky : To James Lapine, directing his new play 'Luck, Pluck & Virtue' means booting Horatio Alger smack dab into the '90s" LA Times, August 1, 1993
- ^ Sondheim, Stephen (2011). Look I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 146
- ^ Long, Robert. "Broadway, The Golden Years: Jerome Robbins And The Great Choreographer-Directors: 1940 To The Present" (2003). Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1462-1, pp 133–134
- ^ Flatley, Guy (December 28, 1975). "It's Been One of Tony Perkins' Better Years: A Good Year for Tony Perkins". Los Angeles Times. p. O27.
- ^ Flatley, Guy (February 19, 1978). "Perkins: Film 'sickie' turns to reel bigamy". Chicago Tribune. p. E23.
- ^ Winer, Linda (October 20, 1974). "Filling blanks in the puzzle of Sondheim", Chicago Tribune". p. E3.
- ^ Winecoff, Charles (1996). Split image: the life of Anthony Perkins. Dutton. p. 327.
- ^ Mann, Roderick (November 29, 1979). "Cool Down on 'Rough Cut'". Los Angeles Times. p. G25.
- ^ "Side by Side With Stephen Sondheim". sondheim.com. Archived from the original on September 22, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
- ^ Mann, Roderick (October 7, 1984). "TONY PERKINS: THE 'CRIMES' OF HIS HEART". Los Angeles Times. p. X24.
- ^ Zadan 1986, pp. 352–53.
- ^ Frontain, Raymond-Jean (2011). "Mutual admiration". The Sondheim Review. XVII (3). Sondheim Review, Inc.: 30–33. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ "Powerhouse Scribes Stephen Sondheim & David Ives at Work on New Musical". BroadwayWorld.com. Archived from the original on October 21, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Kepler, Adam W. and Healy, Patrick. "Rolling Along: Sondheim Discloses He's Working on a New Show" Archived July 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine The New York Times (artsbeat.blogs), February 29, 2012
- ^ Wappler, Margaret. "Stephen Sondheim has '20 or 30 minutes' written of a new musical" Archived March 4, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times (blogs), February 2012
- ^ "BWW Exclusive: Stephen Sondheim Drops Hint About New Musical with David Ives!". BroadwayWorld.com. Archived from the original on October 21, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Stephen Sondheim Collaborating With David Ives on New Musical" Archived July 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Playbill.com, February 29, 2012
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim Reveals New Details on David Ives Collaboration". BroadwayWorld.com. Archived from the original on October 21, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Rich, Frank (August 28, 2023). "The Final Sondheim". Vulture. Retrieved August 29, 2023.
- ^ Robert Gordon – 2014 The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies – Page 294 019990927X "Omitted from this survey are the song "Water under the Bridge" composed for the film Singing out Loud, which was never produced."
- ^ "'Singing Out Loud' listing". Sondheimguide.com. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ "Sondheim Talks About Bounce; Revisions in Works". Playbill. August 26, 2003. Archived from the original on April 25, 2017. Retrieved May 16, 2015.
- ^ "Roundabout Live Chat". Roundabout Theatre. May 5, 2008. Archived from the original on May 10, 2008. Retrieved May 19, 2015.
- ^ "Tim Minchin · Groundhog Day: A new stage musical by us". Tim Minchin. Archived from the original on September 17, 2017. Retrieved May 1, 2017.
- ^ criterioncollection (June 10, 2021). "Nathan Lane's Closet Picks". Archived from the original on October 30, 2021. Retrieved August 25, 2021 – via YouTube.
- ^ Bianculli, David (October 26, 2010). "'Primrose': 44 Years Later, Still Sharp As Thumbtacks". NPR. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
- ^ "'The Frogs', 1974 Yale University Production". Sondheimguide.com. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ McKinley, Jesse (November 19, 2003). "Confirmed: No 'Bounce' To Broadway This Season". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 26, 2017. Retrieved March 31, 2021.
- ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on June 8, 2020. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
- ^ "Summit Overview Photo". 2005. Archived from the original on September 5, 2021. Retrieved December 28, 2020.
Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim receives the Academy's Gold Medal from Awards Council member James Earl Jones at the 2005 International Achievement Summit during a Broadway symposium in New York City.
- ^ "Television and Radio listings". Sondheimguide.com. Archived from the original on February 6, 2015. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim to receive special Olivier Award". BBC News. March 4, 2011. Archived from the original on October 16, 2015. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Bennett, Ray.Olivier Awards 2011: 'Legally Blonde,' Stephen Sondheim Dominate" Archived April 1, 2019, at the Wayback Machine HollywoodReporter.com, March 13, 2011
- ^ Gans, Andrew. Stephen Sondheim Receives UK Critics' Circle 2011 Award for Distinguished Services to the Arts" Archived September 6, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Playbill.com, March 9, 2012
- ^ "Theater Hall of Fame members". Archived from the original on January 18, 2015. Retrieved February 9, 2014.
- ^ "Macdowell Medalists". Retrieved August 22, 2022.
- ^ Ledbetter, Lucie. "Stephen Sondheim, Barbra Streisand, and More to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom" Archived November 25, 2015, at the Wayback Machine theatermania.com, November 17, 2015
- ^ "President Obama Announces the Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients". White House. November 10, 2014. Archived from the original on January 21, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2014 – via National Archives.
- ^ Phil Helsel – "Obama honoring Spielberg, Streisand and more with medal of freedom" Archived November 25, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, NBC News, November 24, 2015. Retrieved November 25, 2015.
- ^ "Young Playwrights site". Youngplaywrights.org. Archived from the original on November 4, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Near Cornfields Worthy of Hammerstein, a Theatre Named for Sondheim Rises in Midwest" Archived December 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, May 31, 2007
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Original Cast Members Fete Sondheim at New Midwest Arts Center Dec. 7–9" Archived December 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, December 4, 2007
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim Society Archive – Archives Hub".
- ^ "The Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year". June 10, 2019.
- ^ "Final Judges And Guest Performers Announced For The 2019 West End Gala Of The Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer Of The Year And Stiles + Drewe Prize". May 31, 2019.
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Tomlin to Join Fifth Season of 'Desperate Housewives'" Archived December 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, September 12, 2008
- ^ "Episode list, "Desperate Housewives"". IMDb. Archived from the original on July 19, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Widdicombe, Ben. Gossip, Daily News (New York), March 23, 2005, p. 22; "Desperate Housewives" writer Marc Cherry, who congratulated Sondheim in a filmed statement, admitted the composer was such an inspiration that each episode of his blockbuster show is named after a Sondheim song."
- ^ Chang, Justin. Variety, "Sondheim, Streisand infuse Wisteria Lane", December 20–26, 2004, p. 8; "Broadway-literate fans may have noticed the skein's first three post-pilot episodes ... are all named after classic Stephen Sondheim showtunes ..."
- ^ Sperling, Daniel. "'Desperate Housewives' final episode title revealed" Archived April 27, 2012, at the Wayback Machine digitalspy.com, April 19, 2012
- ^ "Sondheim Will Teach at Oxford". Chicago Tribune. August 10, 1989. Archived from the original on July 2, 2019. Retrieved July 2, 2019.
- ^ "Welcome to MMD". Mercury Musical Developments.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Signature Creates Sondheim Award, to Be Presented at April 2009 Gala" Archived December 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, October 6, 2008
- ^ Horwitz, Jane. "Backstage" column Archived March 22, 2017, at the Wayback Machine Washington Post, October 8, 2008
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. Peters and Cerveris Celebrate Sondheim at DC Sondheim Award Gala April 27". Playbill, April 27, 2009
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Garber, Mazzie, Danieley and More Celebrate Lansbury in DC Gala April 12" Archived March 17, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Playbill.com, April 12, 2010
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Bernadette Peters Gets Sondheim Award April 11; Stephen Buntrock, Rebecca Luker, Euan Morton Sing" Archived April 8, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, April 11, 2011
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Laura Benanti, Howard McGillin and More Sing the Praises of Patti LuPone in DC Sondheim Award Gala April 16" Archived April 8, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Playbill.com, April 16, 2012
- ^ Purcell, Carey. "Signature's Sondheim Award Gala, Featuring Ron Raines, Heidi Blickenstaff and Pamela Myers, Honors Jonathan Tunick April 7" Archived April 12, 2014, at the Wayback Machine playbill.com, April 7, 2014
- ^ "James Lapine to Receive Signature Theatre's 2015 Stephen Sondheim Award" Archived March 23, 2017, at the Wayback Machine broadwayworld.com, November 19, 2014
- ^ Ritzel, Rebecca. "A two-time Tony Award winner headlines Signature Theatre's annual gala" Archived April 13, 2017, at the Wayback Machine The Washington Post, April 8, 2016
- ^ McBride, Walter. "Photo Coverage: Signature Theatre Honors Cameron Mackintosh with Stephen Sondheim Award" Archived March 23, 2017, at the Wayback Machine broadwayworld.com, March 21, 2017
- ^ "It might not sing, but it's right and just". The Sondheim Review. XVII (3). Sondheim Review, Inc.: 4 2011. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ Brown, Mick (September 27, 2010). "Still cutting it at 80: Stephen Sondheim interview". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on April 22, 2018. Retrieved July 10, 2014.
- ^ "The Sondheim Review". Sondheimreview.com. Archived from the original on October 17, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ a b Dry, Jude (November 9, 2019). "Sondheim Is All Over the Movies This Year, but 'Joker' and 'Marriage Story' Don't Do Him Justice". IndieWire. Archived from the original on July 15, 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
- ^ "If Adam Driver's Song In Marriage Story Destroyed You, Read This". Refinery29.com. Archived from the original on May 15, 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
- ^ "The Morning Show Did a Surprise Jennifer Aniston–Billy Crudup Sweeney Todd Duet". Vulture. November 15, 2019. Archived from the original on August 10, 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
- ^ Gans, Andrew. "Benanti, Gleason, Pierce, Stritch, Walton, Zien Join Philharmonic Sondheim Celebration" Archived August 26, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, January 8, 2010
- ^ Ross, Blake. "About Last Night: The Stars on Sondheim" Archived October 16, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill, March 16, 2010
- ^ Hetrick, Adam."Starry Sondheim: The Birthday Concert Airs on "Great Performances" Nov. 24" Archived August 26, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill, November 24, 2010
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Everybody Rise! Roundabout's Sondheim 80 Celebrates a Master's Milestone" Archived July 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, March 22, 2010
- ^ Ross, Blake."About Last Night: Inside Sondheim's Birthday" Archived January 1, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com. Retrieved March 23, 2010.
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Lansbury, Zeta-Jones, Lane, Cariou, Gleason, Zien Sing Sondheim at City Center April 26". Playbill, April 26, 2010
- ^ Gardner, Elysa."Broadway stars salute Stephen Sondheim" Archived January 29, 2011, at the Wayback MachineUSA Today, April 27, 2010
- ^ "BBC Proms Programme". BBC Proms. Archived from the original on August 4, 2010. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ "Judi Dench Sings 'Send in the Clowns' for Sondheim's 80th". BroadwayWorld.com. Archived from the original on June 21, 2012. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ^ Rafter Keddy, Genevieve."Photo Coverage: The New York Pops Celebrate Stephen Sondheim's 80th Birthday" Archived November 24, 2010, at the Wayback Machine broadwayworld.com, November 21, 2010
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Sondheim at Carnegie Hall" Archived December 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine playbill.com, November 21, 2010
- ^ "What Are the Stephen Sondheim Songs Close to Your Heart". The New York Times. March 13, 2020. Archived from the original on March 19, 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
- ^ Fierberg, Ruthie (March 22, 2020). "Watch This Epic Video of Broadway Stars Singing Birthday Wishes and Sondheim Tunes to Wish Stephen Sondheim a 'Happy Birthday'". Playbill.com. Archived from the original on March 30, 2020. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
- ^ "More Stars! Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration Just Got Even Bigger". Broadway.com. Archived from the original on April 26, 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
- ^ "How 'Take Me to the World' Became One of the Best Sondheim Concerts Ever". IndieWire. July 13, 2020. Archived from the original on December 22, 2020. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
- ^ "Watch Live: Meryl Streep, Patti LuPone and More Stars Pay Tribute to Stephen Sondheim". The Hollywood Reporter. April 26, 2020. Archived from the original on May 27, 2020. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
- ^ "Days Before Dying, Stephen Sondheim Reflected: 'I've Been Lucky'". The New York Times. November 27, 2021. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Gans, Andrew (February 13, 2023). "Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga Will Star in Limited West End Run of Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends". Playbill. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
- ^ Horowitz, Mark Eden, Sondheim on Music, New York: Scarecrow Press, 2003, p. 117, ISBN 978-0-8108-4437-7, ISBN 0-8108-4437-0
- ^ Tommasini, Anthony (November 28, 2021). "Stephen Sondheim, as Great a Composer as He Was a Lyricist". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 28, 2021. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ interview on Sunday Arts, ABC (Australia) TV August 5, 2007 An Audience With Stephen Sondheim2007 ABC Australia TV interview Archived April 3, 2015, at the Wayback Machine downloadable ("Episode 26") Archived July 16, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Frontain, Raymond-Jean (2015). "Sondheim, Stephen (b. 1930)" (PDF). GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lebian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Culture. p. 1. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Popular Culture. ABC-CLIO. 2008. p. 239. ISBN 978-0-313-33599-0.
- ^ Kaiser, Charles (2007). The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America. Grove Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-8021-4317-4.
- ^ Gross, Terry (April 21, 2010). "'On Sondheim:' The Musical-Theater Legend At 80". NPR.org. Archived from the original on May 13, 2011. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ Seitz, Matt Zoller (November 28, 2021). "Being Alive: Stephen Sondheim, 1930–2021". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
- ^ a b c Lawson, Mark (November 26, 2021). "Stephen Sondheim: a daring and dazzling musical theatre icon". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 26, 2021. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
- ^ Brown, Mick (September 27, 2010). "Still cutting it at 80: Stephen Sondheim interview". The Telegraph (UK). Archived from the original on April 22, 2018. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
Sondheim has spoken in the past of feeling like an outsider – 'somebody who people want to both kiss and kill' – from quite early on in his life. He spent some 25 years – from his thirties through his fifties – in analysis, did not come out as gay until he was about 40, and did not live with a partner, a dramatist named Peter Jones, until he was 61. They separated in 1999. ...
- ^ Cooper, Alex (November 26, 2021). "Stephen Sondheim, Musical Theater Legend, Dead at 91". The Advocate. Archived from the original on November 27, 2021. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
- ^ Schanke, Robert A. (2005). The Gay & Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Figures in American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era. University of Michigan Press. pp. 362–363. ISBN 978-0-472-09858-3.
- ^ Sondheim, Stephen (2010). Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. Knopf. p. iv. ISBN 978-0-679-43907-3.
- ^ Sondheim, Stephen (2011). Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011), With Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany. Alfred A. Knopf. p. iii. ISBN 978-0-307-59341-2.
- ^ Seitz, Matt Zoller (December 9, 2013). "Seitz: Six by Sondheim Is One of the Best Films About the Artistic Process I've Seen". Vulture. Archived from the original on December 11, 2013.
- ^ Sams, Jeremy (December 4, 2021). "Jeremy Sams remembers Stephen Sondheim, and Braille music with Ria Andriani". The Music Show (Interview). Interviewed by Ford, Andrew. Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National. 42:22. Retrieved December 18, 2021.
- ^ Paulson, Michael (December 8, 2021). "A Sondheim Surge: Interest in His Work Soars After His Death". The New York Times. Retrieved December 9, 2021.
- ^ Paulson, Michael (January 24, 2022). "Stephen Sondheim Leaves Rights to His Works to a Trust". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 24, 2022.
Sources
[edit]- Gottfried, Martin (1993). Sondheim. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-3844-8.
- Secrest, Meryle (1998). Stephen Sondheim: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-44817-9.
- Zadan, Craig (1986). Sondheim & Co (2 ed.). New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-015649-X.
Further reading
[edit]- Guernsey, Otis L. (Editor). Broadway Song and Story: Playwrights/Lyricists/Composers Discuss Their Hits (1986), Dodd Mead, ISBN 0-396-08753-1
External links
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- The Stephen Sondheim Society Web site of The Stephen Sondheim Society
- Stephen Sondheim Papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
- Stephen Sondheim at Playbill Vault
- Stephen Sondheim at the Internet Broadway Database
- Stephen Sondheim at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Stephen Sondheim at IMDb
- Stephen Sondheim discography at Discogs
- Stephen Sondheim online-with Finishing The Chat
- The Stephen Sondheim Reference Guide Comprehensive listings of productions and recordings information
- James Lipton (Spring 1997). "Stephen Sondheim, The Art of the Musical". The Paris Review. Spring 1997 (142).
- Fresh Air NPR radio interview with Sondheim from 2000 (20 minutes, streaming audio)
- Kennedy Center interview with Sondheim, conducted by Frank Rich in 2002 (90 minutes, streaming video)
- Stephen Sondheim Center for Performing Arts
- MMD – developing new musical theatre with Sondheim as patron
- News article "Sondheim 'Story So Far' available 9/30, including previously unreleased tracks", BroadwayWorld.com
- Review "Sondheim has more story to tell" USA Today, October 8, 2008
- Stephen Sondeim: Alumni of Distinction – New York Military Academy archives page
- Stephen Sondheim symposium held at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2005
- BroadwayWorld.com interview with Stephen Sondheim, December 20, 2007
- Review of "Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981)" November 2010
- Stephen Sondheim interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, August 22, 1980
- Stephen Sondheim
- 1930 births
- 2021 deaths
- 20th-century American composers
- 20th-century American LGBT people
- 21st-century American composers
- 21st-century American LGBT people
- 21st-century American Jews
- American gay musicians
- American gay writers
- American LGBT composers
- American LGBT songwriters
- American musical theatre composers
- American musical theatre lyricists
- American people of German-Jewish descent
- American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
- Best Original Song Academy Award-winning songwriters
- Beta Theta Pi
- Broadway composers and lyricists
- Crossword creators
- Deaths from cardiovascular disease
- Drama Desk Award winners
- Edgar Award winners
- Ethical Culture Fieldston School alumni
- Fellows of St Catherine's College, Oxford
- Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
- Gay composers
- Gay Jews
- Gay songwriters
- George School alumni
- Grammy Award winners
- Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music
- Ivor Novello Award winners
- Jewish American composers
- Jewish American songwriters
- Jewish classical musicians
- Jews from Connecticut
- Jews from New York (state)
- Jews from Pennsylvania
- Kennedy Center honorees
- Laurence Olivier Award winners
- LGBT classical musicians
- LGBT people from Connecticut
- LGBT people from New York (state)
- LGBT people from Pennsylvania
- Male musical theatre composers
- Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Musicians from Bucks County, Pennsylvania
- Musicians from Manhattan
- New York Military Academy alumni
- People from Doylestown, Pennsylvania
- People from Roxbury, Connecticut
- People from the Upper West Side
- People from Turtle Bay, Manhattan
- Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners
- Puzzle designers
- Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale
- Songwriters from New York (state)
- Special Tony Award recipients
- Tony Award winners
- United States National Medal of Arts recipients
- Williams College alumni