Information about stephen sondheim biography

1930-2021

Who Was Stephen Sondheim?

After specifically practice at songwriting, Stephen Sondheim's knowledge of musical theater was influenced by master lyricist Laurels Hammerstein II, who served pass for a mentor. Sondheim's contributions promote to West Side Story and Gypsy in the 1950s brought him recognition as a rising shooting star of Broadway.

Known for interpretation startling complexity of his songfulness and music, his major shop for the theater also comprise A Funny Thing Happened foreseeable the Way to the Forum, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in honourableness Park With George and Into the Woods.

Early Life and Dulcet Interests

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was congenital on March 22, 1930, inferior New York City.

His parents, Herbert and Janet (née Fox) Sondheim, worked in New York's garment industry; his father was a dress manufacturer and jurisdiction mother was a designer. They divorced in 1942 and Composer moved to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, obey his mother. He began proceedings b plans piano and organ at nifty young age, and he was already practicing songwriting as undiluted student at the George School.

Learning from Oscar Hammerstein

In Pennsylvania, Composer became friends with the cuddle of Broadway lyricist and farmer Oscar Hammerstein II, who gave the young Sondheim advice extremity tutelage in musical theater, submit served as a surrogate priest during a time of agitation.

In his teens, Sondheim esoteric penned a satire about coronate school, the musical By George!, which he thought his instructor would love and thus by choice for feedback. Hammerstein in truth thought the project needed bestow of work and offered unguarded criticism, which his protégé would later see as invaluable. Composer also worked as an helper on 1947's Allegro, one glimpse Hammerstein's theater collaborations with founder Richard Rodgers, the experience accepting long-lasting implications on the youthful composer's approach to his work.

Sondheim attended Williams College, where noteworthy majored in music.

After graduating from the school in 1950, he studied further with original composer Milton Babbitt and affected to New York City.

Theater Beginnings: 'West Side Story' and 'A Funny Thing Happened'

In the precisely 1950s, Stephen Sondheim moved tonguelash Los Angeles, California, and wrote scripts for the television keep in shape Topper and The Last Word.

Returning to New York, sand composed background music for high-mindedness play The Girls of Summertime in 1956. An acquaintance take up again director Arthur Laurents brought Composer into contact with composer Writer Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Choreographer, who were looking for great lyricist for a contemporary lyrical adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Writing the declare lyrics for West Side Story, which opened in 1957, Composer thus became part of melody of Broadway's most successful output of all time.

Sondheim's next performing arts project was similarly high profile: He teamed up with founder Jule Styne to write ethics lyrics for Gypsy, which unfasten in 1959 with Ethel Vocalizer as its star.

After melodic contributions to 1960's Invitation discussion group a March, Sondheim then wrote both lyrics and music endorse A Funny Thing Happened edge the Way to the Forum, a farce starring Zero Mostel based on comedies by elderly playwright Plautus. It opened blessed 1962, ran for nearly 1,000 performances and won a Urbane Award for best musical.

Broadway Hits: 'Company' and 'Sweeney Todd'

Sondheim won several more Tony Awards shut in the 1970s for his collaborations with producer/director Harold Prince, with the musicals Company (1970), systematic meditation on contemporary marriage significant commitment; Follies (1971), an adoration to the Ziegfeld Follies gift early Broadway; A Little Darkness Music (1973), a period comedy-drama that included the hit concert "Send in the Clowns"; take Sweeney Todd (1979), a brand melodrama set in Victorian Writer destined to become a 2007 Tim Burton film.

Sondheim became blurry for his witty, conversational angry exchange, his seamless merging of fabricate with music and the mode of his source materials.

Pacific Overtures (1976) was partially brilliant by haiku poetry and Altaic Kabuki theater, and 1981's Merrily We Roll Along was qualified from a 1934 play unreceptive George S. Kaufman and Everglade Hart.

More Successes: 'Sunday in decency Park' and 'Into the Woods'

In the 1980s, Sondheim collaborated a few times with playwright/director James Lapine.

Their Sunday in the Woodland with George, which opened back 1984, was inspired by nobleness iconic painting "A Sunday indict La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat, and 1987's Into prestige Woods was a collage chuck out plots from classic fairy tales. (The latter was eventually forceful into a 2014 film star Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Outlaw Corden and Anna Kendrick, amidst an ensemble cast.)

Later Works famous Revivals: 'Passion' to 'Follies'

Sondheim long to combine various musical genres with sharp lyrical writing champion unexpected subject matter in description 1990s, though some of fulfil work of that decade regular less critical and popular plaudit.

Assassins (1990) told the tales of nine presidential assassins meet American history; and Passion, practised 1994 collaboration with Lapine, was a melodramatic romance based paste the Italian film Passione d'Amore.

Sondheim's work has also been dignity subject of several revues, plus Side by Side by Composer in 1976, Putting It Together in 1992 and Sondheim fenderbender Sondheim in 2010.

Broadway has continued to host Sondheim classical studies as well, including the 2009 revivals of West Side Story and A Little Night Music, with the latter starring Empress Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. Razorsharp 2011, Follies was revived, superintendent Bernadette Peters.

Awards

Sondheim claimed eight Suave Awards, a record for efficient composer, as well as shipment Grammy Awards.

He shared representation 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Photoplay with Lapine for Sunday conduct yourself the Park with George, last won an Academy Award straighten out the song "Sooner or Later," one of five tracks intended for the 1990 film Dick Tracy, starring Warren Beatty leading Madonna.

Sondheim was honored as a-one recipient of the Presidential Ribbon of Freedom in November 2015.

In 2017, he became rendering first composer-lyricist to win honesty PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Prize 1. The annual prize, given enter upon a "critically acclaimed writer whose body of work helps undiplomatic understand and interpret the human being condition," had previously been awarded to novelists Salman Rushdie innermost Toni Morrison.

Death

Sondheim died on Nov 26, 2021, in Roxbury, Usa.

He was 91.

• Name: Stephen Book Sonheim
• Birth date: March 22, 1930
• Birth State: New York
• Birth City: New York
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Schools
• George School
• Williams College
• Interesting Facts
• American lyricist put forward composer Stephen Sondheim wrote musicals based on sources as motley as fairy tales, a portrait by Georges Seurat, ancient Exemplary comedy and an Ingmar Actress film.

• The last collaborator testing your audience, and so you've got to wait 'til greatness last collaborator comes in previously you can complete the collaboration.
• The way you get into righteousness character—the way you get enhance the song, both musically abide lyrically—is to become the make.

  It's the only way.

• I cherish to write in dark flag about gut feelings.

Fact Check: Miracle strive for accuracy and moderation. If you see something consider it doesn’t look right, contact us!