Sondheim’s best-known song - the haunting “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music” - won a Grammy as song of the year in 1975, performed by Judy Collins. In 1985, Sondheim and librettist James Lapine’s musical “Sunday in the Park With George” was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for drama. (His personal Tony Awards tally stands at eight, including a lifetime achievement honor in 2008.) In the early ’70s, Sondheim won Tonys for his music and lyrics three years running for “Company,” “Follies” and “A Little Night Music.” He also won Tonys for his music and lyrics for “Sweeney Todd” in 1979, “Into the Woods” in 1988 and “Passion” in 1994. Sondheim and Prince went on to collaborate on “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “Pacific Overtures,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Merrily We Roll Along,” which closed after only 16 performances but came to be regarded as an overlooked triumph. But with Sondheim, you realized the angst of living in the late 20th century.”
Observed Gardner: “With Hammerstein, you felt wonderful when you left the theater. Sondheim, 91, whose work is driving this year’s holiday cultural season, was rousingly welcomed at the production’s triumphant reopening.Īs a budding teenage composer-lyricist in the 1940s, Sondheim had been mentored by close family friend Oscar Hammerstein II, the renowned lyricist and librettist for “Oklahoma!,” “South Pacific” and other crowd-pleasing musicals.īut as San Francisco Chronicle theater critic Steven Winn wrote in 2000, Sondheim transformed the craft “with his own linguistic powers and thematic range, taking on subjects - from emotional ambivalence to cultural relativism and presidential assassinations - undreamed of by his mentor.” In comes ‘Company’: Stephen Sondheim feted at show’s first Broadway performance Then we ran into rock music, and it’s like, ‘Oh, no.’ Suddenly, with ‘Company,’ we have a new savior.” “After the great book musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, we had a period of diminishing creativity. “Sondheim changed musical theater,” the late Gary Gardner, the former chair of the Ray Bolger Program in Musical Theater at UCLA, told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. The long-running show, with a book by George Furth, launched Sondheim’s longtime collaboration with director Harold Prince and won six Tony Awards, including one for best musical.
#CAMP ROCK 2 SONGS WITH LYRICS SERIES#
The nonlinear show unfolds through a series of vignettes that explore modern marriage and relationships as Bobby visits with the different couples. It began with “Company,” a 1970 concept musical about a commitment-averse New York City bachelor named Bobby that opens with his friends - five couples - waiting for him to show up at his surprise 35th birthday party. As Tony-winning actor Hugh Jackman reflected on Twitter, “Every so often someone comes along that fundamentally shifts an entire art form.
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