Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim has died aged 91, reports The New York Times. Sondheim was best known for the musical West Side Story, but also wrote, among other things, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. He was one of the few composers who wrote both text and music for musicals.
Sondheim was an acclaimed and acclaimed composer. During his career he won a total of seven Tony Awards, the most important American theater awards. He was also awarded an Oscar in 1990 for the song Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man) from the movie Dick Tracy and in 2015 with a Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Barack Obama.
Also read this tribute to the musical Sunday in the Park with George: Sondheim’s musical notes as dots and wipes on a cloth
Sondheim died suddenly at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, Friday morning, according to his attorney and friend Richard Pappas, after celebrating Thanksgiving with his friends the day before.
Innovative style
Sondheim was often called the reinventor of American musical theater because of his innovative style and his music and lyrics are characterized according to fansite Sondheim Netherlands through great complexity and depth. Partly because of this, he is also known as the Shakespeare of the musical genre.
He wrote his first musical when he was fifteen, but really broke through the West Side Story which he wrote in 1957 together with Leonard Bernstein. After that success, many more musicals followed, including Gypsy (1959), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd (1979), praised by NRC critic Henk van Gelder Sunday in the Park with George (1984) and in the 1990s still Assassins and passion.
In 2010, a New York Broadway theater was renamed the Stephen Sondheim Theater in recognition of his distinguished career.
#West #Side #Story #composer #Stephen #Sondheim #passed