Stephen Sondheim

For more than 50 years, Stephen Sondheim set an unsurpassed standard of brilliance and artistic integrity in the musical theatre. His accolades included an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, multiple Drama Desk awards and a Pulitzer Prize.

He wrote the music and lyrics for Saturday Night (1954), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), The Frogs (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday In The Park With George (1984), Into The Woods (1987), Assassins (1991), Passion (1994), Bounce (2003) which later became Road Show (2008). He also wrote lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear A Waltz? (1965), Candide (1973, additional lyrics). For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) and co-composed Reds (1981), as well as songs for The Seven Percent Solution (1976) and Dick Tracy (1990). He also wrote the songs for the television production Evening Primrose (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) and the play Getting Away With Murder (1996). He provided incidental music for the plays The Girls Of Summer (1956), Invitation To A March (1961), Twigs (1971), The Enclave (1973) and a new production of King Lear (2007) and songs for the plays I Know My Love (1951) and A Mighty Man Is He (1955). He wrote the “Passionella” segment of The World of Jules Feiffer (1963), and additional material for Hot Spot (1963), The Mad Show (1966) and The Madwoman Of Central Park West (1979). He created cryptic crosswords for New York Magazine in the late 1960s, and was screenwriter for the television series Topper (c.1953). As an actor, he featured in the television revision of June Moon (1974) and has appeared as himself in the film Camp (2003). He received the Tony Award for Best Score/Music/Lyrics for Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods and Passion, all of which won the New York Drama Circle award for Outstanding /Best Musical, as did Pacific Overtures and Sunday In The Park With George. In total, his works have accumulated more than sixty individual and collaborative Tony Awards. “Sooner Or Later” from the film Dick Tracy won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Song. Mr Sondheim received The Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1984 for Sunday In The Park With George. Sondheim studied at George School, Pennsylvania (1942 to 1946) and at Williams College, Massachusetts (1946 to 1950), where he was a music major. On college graduation he received the Hutchinson Prize for Composition, and subsequently studied music theory and composition with the avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt.