Stephen Sondheim was one of the greatest Broadway songwriters. He died in Roxbury (Conn) on Friday morning. He was 91.
Attorney F. Richard Pappas announced his death. He described it as unexpected. Pappas announced that Sondheim and friends celebrated Thanksgiving only a day before.
Sondheim’s catalog includes such works as “Company” (1970), “Follies” (1971), “A Little Night Music” (1973), “Pacific Overtures” (1976), “Sweeney Todd” (1979), “Merrily We Roll Along” (1981), “Sunday in the Park With George”(1984) “Into the Woods” (1987).
One of his most memorable songs is “Send In the Clowns,”From “Night Music.”
Broadway was his mainstay and he was widely regarded as the greatest composer/lyricist of all time. He was one of few theater composers to handle words and music, along with Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Frank Loesser.
As impressive as his songwriting was, were his achievements as a lyricist. He composed the lyrics. “West Side Story”And “Gypsy”In the late 1950s.
Sondheim was the first to write his lyrics and words for the 1962 farcical 1962 comedy. “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,”It won the Tony Award for best musical, and was in production for over two years.
Overall, he wrote music and the lyrics for a dozen Broadway shows, a list which doesn’t incude revues like “Side by Side by Sondheim,” “Putting It Together,”Autobiographical and biographical “Sondheim on Sondheim.”Five of them won Tony Awards as best musicals, while six were honored for best original scores.
His “Sunday in the Park”The 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded to him.
Sondheim’s show revivals were also successful. Three Tonys were won by Sondheim, including “Assassins”In 2004, Off Broadway was established.
Sondheim was later awarded a 1993 Kennedy Center Honors and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. He was awarded a Tony Award in 2008 for his lifetime achievements, which was followed by the renaming of Henry Miller Theater in his honour in 2010.
Sondheim was also a composer of music for films, such as the score for The Sound of Music. “Stavisky,”This 1974 movie is about a French banker and embezzler. His song “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” for Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy”1991 Academy Award. Six cast albums were nominated for Grammy Awards. “Send In the Clowns”In 1975, won the Grammy for song-of-the-year.
Jeffrey Romley was his husband. Walter Sondheim, is his half-brother.