Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim dies ‘Incomparable’ at 91 | Obituary News

Legendary composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who is highly regarded for revolutionizing musical theater, died on Friday at the age of 91, The New York Times reported.

F attorney Richard Pappas told the newspaper that Sondheim – known for his musicals West Side Story and Sweeney Todd – died suddenly at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, the day after Thanksgiving with friends.

“There are no words. He had them all. And music. He was incomparable, ”said the UK’s Stephen Sondheim Society, which is dedicated to promoting and researching his work, tweeted along with three heart emojis, one of which was broken.

“He was God to many of us. We loved his work. And God was good. ”

Born on March 22, 1930, into a wealthy New York family, Sondheim has been involved in musical theater since he was a child.

He began playing the piano at the age of seven and, when his parents divorced and moved to Pennsylvania with his mother, he learned to write musicals with his neighbor Oscar Hammerstein II, and wrote well-known shows with his partner Richard Rodgers, including The Sound of Music.

Sondheim made his first major breakthrough on Broadway in 1957 with West Side Story, which transplanted Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the working class.

“We are all happy to have lived through this legend of theater at the same time … and to have received from him such a precious gift as his art.”

Stephen Sondheim has died at the age of 91 @SondheimSociety‘s @craigglenday offers some initial reflections …https://t.co/UVcbLvWCHy pic.twitter.com/P5mzITxPPV

– Musical TheaterReview (@MusicalTheatreR) November 27, 2021

He left us a lot of words, but not enough for this post. Goodbye, old friend. Thank you, Stephen Sondheim, for so much brilliance in the theater and for sharing your music with us all. pic.twitter.com/Qe55GcDQeS

– Tony Awards (@TheTonyAwards) November 27, 2021

Subsequent successes included Sweeney Todd, a London barber who serves victims as meat pies, and In the Woods, which opened on Broadway in 1987 and used children’s fairy tales to unleash adult obsessions.

“I love theater as much as music, and the whole idea of ​​reaching out to the audience and making them laugh, just making them cry, feeling it, is key to me,” Sondheim said in a 2013 interview with National Public Radio. .

‘Sing your songs forever’

Sondheim has won numerous awards in his career, including eight Grammy Awards and eight Tony Awards, including a Special Honor for the Achievement of Life in Theater. He also received an Oscar and a Pulitzer Prize, and was nominated for other Grammy and Tony Awards, as well as two Golden Globe Awards.

In 2015, then-US President Barack Obama awarded Sondheim a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for his life’s work.

Several of Sondheim’s musicals have become films, including an Oscar-winning West Side Story in 1961, and Into the Woods starring Meryl Streep in 2007. It will be a new version of West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg. released next month.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the successful rap musical Hamilton and was Sondheim’s tutor, has been named the greatest lyricist in musical theater.

Sondheim, who was gay, allegedly lived alone until he was 60, preserving his sexuality. In 2017, she married her partner Jeffrey Romley, who survives.

“Thank you Lord for living in Sondheim at the age of 91, so he had time to write wonderful music and BIG lyrics!” tweeted singer Barbra Streisand.

Actress and singer Lea Salonga, who was the first Asian woman to win a Tony for creating the lead role in the musical Miss Saigon, thanked Sondheim for “her great contributions to musical theater.”

“We’ll sing your songs forever. Alas, my heart hurts, ”he wrote on Twitter.