Musical theatre icon Stephen Sondheim dies at 91
Legendary USA musician and songster Stephen Sondheim has died aged ninety one.
His attorney told the big apple Times that Stephen Sondheim kicked the bucket on Fri at his point Roxbury, Connecticut.
He was a titan of musical theatre WHO turned the unlikeliest of subjects into diversion landmarks.
During his illustrious career, he wrote the a lot of a number of Broadway’s best known shows as well as Company, Follies and a touch Night Music. Stephen Sondheim additionally wrote the lyrics for side Story.
The New-York born musician won eight Grammy awards, 9 Tony awards – as well as the special life action within the Theatre – and one award. He additionally received a publisher Prize.
In 2015, USA President Barack Obama given Stephen Sondheim the Presidential palm of Freedom – the very best civilian award – for his work.
Sondheim’s attorney aforesaid the musician had celebrated Thanksgiving with friends daily before his death.
Tributes have started running to 1 of musical theatre’s most revered composers.
New York town city manager Bill DE Blasio tweeted: “Stephen Stephen Sondheim created fantastic worlds and characters, however at the guts of each story he told was a child from big apple town. which child was a legend. one in every of the brightest lights of Great White Way is dark tonight. could he rest in peace.”
US player and singer Pakistani monetary unit Kendrick aforesaid that activity Sondheim’s work “has been among the best privileges of my career”, adding that the composer’s death was “a devastating loss”.
Journalist fuel-air explosive histrion, denote on Twitter a letter she received from Stephen Sondheim in 2011, once she was “theatre-mad 16-year-old”.
She aforesaid it “made ME take weeks and propelled ME towards a career of art and writing. many thanks for everything. Rest easy.”
Born on twenty two March 1930, Stephen Sondheim saw his initial Great White Way musical at the age of 9.
The following year he met lyricist II, of The King and that i and Oklahoma! fame, WHO became his mentor as he created his initial forays into musical theatre.
After some adolescent experiments with the shape, he was commissioned to show porch in Flatbush, a play by twin brothers Julius and Philip statue maker, into a musical.
The ensuing piece, referred to as Sat Night, didn’t open on Great White Way in 1954 as planned, following the death of its producer, Lemuel Ayers. Indeed, it’d be forty three years before it received its skilled premiere in London.
Sondheim’s massive break instead came through letter of invitation to pen lyrics for side Story, Dutch Leonard Bernstein’s modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
West Side Story opened on Great White Way in 1957 and ran for over 700 performances. A 1961 film version won ten Oscars.
In 2010, the year Stephen Sondheim turned eighty, a Great White Way theatre was renamed in his honour.
Ten years later, he received an equivalent honor in London once the Queen’s Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue was rechristened the Stephen Sondheim.
Sondheim is survived by his husband, Jeffrey Scott Romley, WHO is sort of fifty years his junior, whom he married in 2017.
“You need to work on one thing that creates you unsure – one thing that creates you doubt yourself,” Stephen Sondheim aforesaid in 2017.
“If you recognize wherever you are going, you have gone, because the author says. and that is death.”
