Stephen Sondheim, the composer, and lyricist of Broadway blockbusters such as West Side Story, has died at the age of 91. His eight lifetime Tony Awards are more than any other composer's total.
Stephen Sondheim was a prolific and successful musical theater writer who won eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Sondheim was born in New York City on March 22, 1930.
In 1942, his parents split, and he and his mother moved to Pennsylvania. He met James Hammerstein, the son of songwriter Oscar Hammerstein II, in Pennsylvania. His relationship with his mother deteriorated throughout his adolescence, and the two eventually became estranged.
However, throughout high school and college, Oscar Hammerstein II was a continuous force in Sondheim's life, encouraging his musical abilities. In 1957, Sondheim received his big break when he created the lyrics for the Broadway production West Side Story.
Then, in 1962, he broadened his repertoire by writing the lyrics and composing the music for the first time for a comical thing that happened on the way to the forum.
In 1970, Sondheim began a more than ten-year association with theater producer Hal Prince. Their 1973 play A Little Night Music, which was primarily written in Walt's time and became one of their biggest commercial triumphs, was composed mostly in Walt's time.
It includes the famous song "Send in the Clowns," which is one of Sondheim's most well-known works. Sweeney Todd, the story of an English barber and serial killer, was possibly Broadway's first musical thriller when it premiered in 1979. Sondheim found inspiration everywhere, and in 1984, he pinned the words for Sunday in the Park with George to a famous painting by Georges Serra.
Received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his creative stagecraft. In 1987, he penned the Broadway hit into the woods, which was based on the Grimm Brothers' fables. Lin-Manuel Miranda approached Sondheim late in his career with a musical he was working on called the Hamilton Mixtape.
As hammerstein had done for him, sondheim mentored Miranda. Sondheim's influence on American musical theater extended decades and produced some of the world's most successful musicals, from waltzes to rap inspired by everything from serial killers to fairy tales.