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Broadway composer and songwriter Stephen Sondheim, who helped develop American musical theater past pure leisure and attain new creative heights with works similar to West Side Story, Into the Woods And Sweeney ToddHe died early Friday on the age of 91, his publicist stated.
The music nice died at his residence in Roxbury, Connecticut, spokeswoman Katherine Zuckerman advised Reuters By e mail, saying that he has little extra info. information was reported earlier new York Times.
Sondheim’s eight Tony Awards for his songs and music exceeded the full variety of every other composer. In 2008, he additionally gained a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He began early, studying the artwork of musical theater when he was a teen from his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, who was an incredible songwriter. Sound of Music,
hamilton Producer Lin-Manuel Miranda, who in flip was mentored by Sondheim, has known as him musical theatre’s best songwriter.
Sondheim’s most profitable works embrace within the woods, which opened on Broadway in 1987 and used youngsters’s fairy tales to resolve grownup obsessions; 1979 Thriller Sweeney Todd, a couple of murderous barber in London whose victims are served as meat pies; and of 1962 A humorous factor occurred on the best way to the stage, Vaudeville-style comedy primarily based on historical Rome.
He additionally wrote the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s rating. story of the westInspired by William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, and collaborated with fellow musician Jule Stein as songwriter gypsy, loosely primarily based on the memoirs of Cumbersome star Gypsy Rose Lee.
Sondheim stated in a 2013 interview with National Public Radio, “I love theater as much as music, and the whole idea of reaching out to audiences and making them laugh, make them cry – just make them feel – is paramount to me. ” ,
Many of Sondheim’s hits have been tailored into movies, together with the 2014 movie within the woods, starring Meryl Streep, and 2007 Sweeney Todd With Johnny Depp. a brand new movie model of story of the westDirected by Stephen Spielberg, from a screenplay by Tony Kushner, opens subsequent month.
During a visitor look in September CBS Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Sondheim stated that he visited the set of Spielberg’s adaptation, and supported the movie “as really first rate”.
Sondheim’s songs have been celebrated for his or her sharp wit and perception into fashionable life and voicing complicated characters, however few of them made the pop charts.
‘Joker’ hit
However, he scored successful, and one of many three Grammys of his profession, with ship within the Clowns from his 1973 musical a little bit Night Music, It was recorded by Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Judy Collins. Sondheim additionally earned the Academy Award for Best-Song in 1991 in the end (I all the time get my man), sung by madonna in Dick Tracy Film.
In 2015, President Barack Obama offered the songwriter with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony.
One of Sondheim’s largest wins was the Pulitzer Prize he shared with James Lapin for the 1984 musical Sunday within the Park with George, circa nineteenth century French neo-impressionist artist Georges Seurat. each additionally cooperated within the forests.
Actress Bernadette Peters, who performed Dot and Mary sunday within the park and the witch within the woods, Expressing grief over the lack of a buddy, Sondheim “gave me so much to sing.”
Fellow actress Anna Kendrick, who performed . Starred as Cinderella within the movie model of within the woods, known as Sondheim’s dying “a devastating loss”.
“Working for him has been one of the greatest privileges of my career,” he stated on Twitter.
As Sondheim garnered accolades, New York City’s Broadway theater business underwent many adjustments. It had a major function in American tradition through the Nineteen Fifties, with many Broadway songs making the pop charts, however rock music took maintain of the lots within the Sixties.
Composer Mark N. Increasingly, music borrowed materials from tv and movies fairly than the opposite approach round, Grant wrote in his guide T.That Rise and Fall of a Broadway Musical,
Sondheim shared the view that Broadway had skilled decline, expressing repeatedly in interviews.
“There are so many forms of entertainment, theater is becoming more marginalised,” he advised the British newspaper The Times in 2012.
But Broadway musicals additionally turned extra creative, and Sondheim was instrumental of their growth, critics stated. He explored necessary matters similar to political violence killers, the human want for household and the drag of dysfunctional relationships within the woods, social inequality Sweeney Todd, and in Western imperialism Pacific Overtures,
He additionally developed new methods to current performs. Instead of telling a narrative from starting to finish, he jumped backwards and forwards in time to discover a single theme. It was known as “concept music”.
Broadway Audiences Introduced to Sondheim story of the west in 1957. The story of the love affair between a Puerto Rican lady, Maria, and a white boy, Tony, in working-class Manhattan was tailored into an Oscar-winning movie in 1961. The central characters expressed their fascination within the songs. maria, someplace And tonight.
dispute with mom
Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, in New York City to rich Jewish dad and mom who labored in trend. He described his early childhood as a solitary one, with servants as his most important firm.
His dad and mom separated when he was 10 years previous, Sondheim moved together with his mom to rural Pennsylvania, the place he purchased a farm. He later stated that his mom took out her anger on him over the divorce. He discovered a surrogate household within the close by residence of Hammerstein and his spouse, Dorothy.
Hammerstein, who created the traditional music with composer Richard Rodgers Oklahoma! South Pacific And Sound of Music, taught Kishore Sondheim to put in writing musical theatre.
After Sondheim turned well-known, he mentored others on Broadway. When Miranda started engaged on a rap musical in regards to the American founding father Alexander Hamilton, Sondheim inspired and criticized him. The play turned a smash hit on Broadway in 2015.
In a field workplace success, Sondheim was surpassed by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. the Phantom of the Opera And cat’s With whom Sondheim shared the birthday.
Sondheim surprised audiences, generally leading to field workplace flops.
Some of his least commercially profitable performs have been praised by critics. Including 1976. have been concerned Pacific Overtures, depicting Japan through the period of Western colonialism and its 1990 Off-Broadway manufacturing killers About the real-life figures who got down to kill each US president.
Sondheim had many admirers within the educational world. In 1994, 5 years after the University of Oxford in England named him as visiting professor of drama, a quarterly journal known as the Sondheim Review was established to look at his work.
His devotees celebrated the sharp irony of his lyrics, which he described as commenting on every thing from the bounds of America’s melting pot to the detrimental aspect of marriage.
these strains ladies having lunch in his Nineteen Seventies music firm A particular piece of Sondheim’s wit included: “Here’s to the girls who play the wife / Aren’t they too much? / Guarding the house, but holding a copy of ‘life’ / Just to keep in touch.”
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